IQNdex Continues Up Trend in April
The preliminary reading of the US IQNdex, representing bill rates for temporary workers in the US, increased in April to 102.0, an increase of 0.4 from March and 2.0 from April 2010. This continues a five-month run of increases from 2010’s low-water value of 99.2 in November 2010, and is the largest year-over-year increase in the IQNdex in over two years, indicating increasing prices for bill rates overall.
IQNdex was referenced in the Reuters article “As Job Growth Accelerates, Wages May Follow”. Temporary-worker rates and the IQNdex will likely continue to rise if full-time hiring persists (April had the highest hiring level in five years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) and unemployment goes down (the US unemployment rate is down 0.8 overall since November, and those unemployed 27 weeks or longer went down by 2.1 percent in April).
Looking within the IQNdex by job sector, mainly low-skill job sectors showed rate increases (Light Industrial and Clerical/Admin), additional evidence that an overall tightening supply of workers is leading to increased rates. Regionally, all the US census regions showed increases except the Northeast.
Hopefully hiring will continue to aid the economic recovery, and we’ll see how rates respond in the coming months.
