Job Ad Index Off Again; More Layoffs Seen

Labor market conditions worsened in October with no sign of a quick turnaround, a leading business research group reported Wednesday in a monthly survey of help-wanted advertising.

The Conference Board’s help-wanted advertising index fell to 116 in October, six points below the September level and 34 points below the year-earlier level.

The index’s decline substantiated other assessments of growing trouble in the U.S. labor market, which has been beset by layoffs and reduced hiring plans because of an underlying economic decline that some are calling a recession.

On Monday, for example, Manpower Inc., the world’s largest temporary help firm, reported in a quarterly survey that hiring plans of U.S. companies will plunge to “recession depths” in the first quarter of 1991.

“The decline in the economy in the fourth quarter affords very little opportunity to develop new jobs,” Conference Board economist Kenneth Goldstein said. “Layoffs continue to climb, as does the national unemployment rate.”

The national unemployment level, which moved from 5.2% in June to 5.7% as of October, will likely climb to 6.5% in the second half of 1991, Goldstein asserted. The Labor Department is scheduled to release its figures on November unemployment Friday.

The Conference Board survey showed that advertising volume in newspapers fell almost everywhere in the country, particularly in the Southeast, with a 12.8% decline, and New England, with a 9.2% decline. Least affected was the Pacific region, but help-wanted ad volume there still fell 4.2%.

More disturbing, the Conference Board survey suggested, was a 5.2% drop in help-wanted advertising in the Midwest, which has enjoyed relative prosperity in recent months because of a manufacturing resurgence and foreign demand for U.S. goods.

“There has been a significant deterioration in the labor markets of the Pacific and the South Atlantic,” Goldstein said. “Even more telling--job advertising declines are now firmly set in America’s heartland.”

The survey assesses help-wanted advertising volume in 51 major newspapers across the country every month and is considered a sensitive barometer to changes in the supply of jobs.

Advertising Dips Help-wanted advertising in newspapers, seasonally adjusted; index base: 1967 equals 100 Oct., ‘90: 116 Sept., ‘90: 122 Oct., ‘89: 151 Source: Commerce Department