Job growth in manufacturing slows, but wage offers rise

Although growth in manufacturing employment slowed in August, increasing difficulty in recruiting skilled workers to fill key positions is leading some employers to offer higher starting wages. That is the basis of the Leading Indicator of National Employment (LINE) report, released Tuesday 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 has been recorded. Currently, there is no indication of widespread wage inflation, but if the job market continues to tighten, there will be greater pressures on manufacturers to increase new-hire compensation. LINE reports on five employment measures: manufacturing employment, manufacturing vacancies, recruiting difficulty, new hire compensation and employment expectations. An index value above 50 indicates employment is growing, while an index below 50 shows that employment is contracting. In the August report, the overall LINE stood at 60.6 (down from 61.8 in July). Among the individual indices, manufacturing employment was 58.4 (down from 61.2 in July), manufacturing vacancies was 65.8 (up from 64.8), recruiting difficulty was 63.0 (up from 60.7), new hire compensation was 55.9 (up from 54.7) and employment expectations was 70.7 (up from 70.5). For a full copy of the report and a detailed description of each component, go to http://www.shrm.org/LINE.