Indicators of Labour Demand

There are several indicators of labour demand that can be used to assess labour market conditions and as inputs into forecasts of employment growth. These include measures of job vacancies, job advertisements and business surveys of employment intentions. Over the past year, there have been pronounced declines in a number of these indicators and employment growth has been somewhat subdued. This article suggests that as well as being a source of information on current labour market conditions, these indicators provide some leading information on employment growth, although the forecasting performance of models including these indicators is only slightly better than that of a simple benchmark model.