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[Zephyr]

Gallup U.S. Job Creation Index
Released On 4/2/2014 8:30:00 AM For Mar, 2014
Prior Actual
level 21 23
Highlights
Gallup's Job Creation Index, based on employee reports of hiring and layoff activity at their workplaces, reached a six-year high of plus 23 in March, nearly tying the plus 24 recorded in March 2008. The index for March is two points higher than it was in February, and shows a six-point improvement from last March.

The index was plus 26 in January 2008, when Gallup began Daily tracking of employee reports of hiring and layoff activity at their workplaces. Monthly averages began to plunge later that year as the economic recession worsened, eventually reaching negative territory and a monthly record low of minus 5 in February and April 2009. The index has recovered slowly since then, and is only now returning to levels seen when the recession began.

Gallup's Job Creation Index is a measure of net hiring activity in the U.S., with the monthly average based on a nationally representative sample of more than 17,000 full- and part-time workers last month. March's plus 23 index is based on 38% of U.S. workers saying their employer is hiring workers and expanding the size of its workforce, and 15% saying their employer is letting workers go and reducing the size of its workforce. Forty-two percent of workers in March said their employer is not changing the size of its workforce.

Thirty-four percent of government workers in March reported that their employer was hiring workers and 21% said their employer was letting workers go. The resulting plus 13 Job Creation Index for government workers is unchanged from February, but five points higher than in January.
Meanwhile, 39% of non-government workers said their employer was hiring and 13% letting workers go, for an index score of plus 26. That is up three points from February, and the highest reading for non-government employment since Gallup began tracking it in mid-2008.

State and local government workers continue to report a more positive hiring situation where they work than federal government workers do. Net hiring reached an all-time high of plus 22 among state government workers in March after mostly increasing over the past five months. Local government net hiring hit a record high in February, but leveled off at plus 13 in March.

Federal net hiring, at minus 1 in March, is inching closer to positive territory; the index for federal workers has been stuck in the negative zone since June 2011, but is up from minus 18 last March.

U.S. workers in the private sector are reporting a more positive jobs situation where they work than at any point in the past six years. Combine this with state workers' record-high job creation reports and the year-over-year improvement from federal workers, and March's promising Job Creation Index reading would appear to be a positive sign in the long recovery from the 2007-2009 economic recession.