Although growth in manufacturing employment slowed this month, increasing difficulty in recruiting skilled workers to fill key positions is leading some employers to offer higher starting wages. That according to new numbers from the Leading Indicator of National Employment (LINE™), released today by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.
In addition, LINE’s recruiting difficulty index—which tracks efforts by manufacturers to recruit highly qualified individuals to fill the positions most critical to a firm’s success—is at its highest level in the 19 months LINE data have been recorded. Currently there is no indication of wide spread wage inflation, but if the job market continues to tighten, there will be greater pressures on manufacturers to increase new-hire compensation.
A collaboration between the Society for Human Resource Management and the Rutgers University, LINE identifies early economic trends and changes in the national job market by surveying human resource (HR) professionals at manufacturing firms. LINE’s monthly numbers are released on the fourth Tuesday of each month. To date, LINE has correlated closely with Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) jobs numbers.
