Worker Confidence Drops

Nearly all factors contributing to the Hudson Employment Index revealed lowered optimism, according to Hudson. The August figure of 99.2 was 6.6 points lower than the prior month and the lowest since September 2005.

Not all regions were below the neutral 100 mark. The cities of Dallas, TX; Washington, DC; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; and Atlanta, GA were all above 100. State by state, Texas workers had the most confident outlook (124.4), followed by Ohio (109.6), Pennsylvania (102.0), and California (100.3). On the other end of the scale, Michigan workers registered 75.2.

Asked if their company would be hiring new workers, laying off workers, or making no change, respondents remained relatively constant over the 12-month period with 29.5% reporting companies would be hiring, 15.6% saying their companies would be laying off workers, and 47.7% anticipated no change. Those numbers for August tracked within a couple of percentage points through the entire period.

By occupation, the lowest confidence levels were in manufacturing (85.1), down 2.8 points from July 2007.