Does the SHRM LINE Report tell us anything that other economic indicators don’t?
The monthly SHRM LINE Report features three unique indicators.

Employment expectations: Participating firms report on whether they expect their employment headcount to increase, remain unchanged or decrease in the upcoming month. Since the HR professionals providing these reports are the individuals who must implement any employment changes, their expectations may be a useful indicator of near-term employment change. The employment expectations index in the LINE Report describes the same time period referenced approximately one month later by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Recruiting difficulty: Participating firms report how difficult it is for them to attract highly qualified applicants to fill key positions compared with the previous month. Both the size and the skill level of the applicant pool affect how difficult it is to find highly qualified applicants. This measure of recruiting difficulty should, therefore, be more sensitive to changing labor market conditions than is the unemployment rate which measures only the number of job seekers.

New hire compensation: Changes in labor market conditions should be reflected in the compensation levels needed to recruit new hires before they show up in the all-employee wage data of the type collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.