The Upjohn Institute New Hires Quality Index dropped 0.2 percent from July’s record high to $20.13 in August, still up 1.2 percent over the past 12 months. Hiring volume has fallen below its prepandemic level for the first time and hiring rates are at a low for the series.
In this month’s news release, Index creator Brad Hershbein examines hiring trends for men and women. The labor market remains strong, Hershbein writes, largely because of the resiliency of women’s employment. Women have outpaced men in growth in earnings power in the last year.
Hiring volume fell for both groups over the same period, 4.0 percent for women and 3.9 percent for men, although women’s hiring is still outpacing men’s since 2005. After gains in the share of the total earnings power held by women in the decade after the Great Recession, women lost ground during the pandemic recovery before stabilizing at around 48.5 percent in 2022.
Given the cooling labor market, women’s hiring dynamics are unlikely to improve relative to men’s in the near future, Hershbein writes.
Read the full release or explore the index.