The ifo Employment Barometer

An important part of business cycle analysis is the assessment of the current situation of the labor market. From the overall economic perspective, many variables are interesting, such as the number of employed persons, vacancies, persons subject to social insurance contributions, number of unemployed, or the unemployment rate. One serious issue, however, is that some official labor market statistics, in particular the number of persons subject to social insurance contributions, are only published with a delay of three months, and reliable data are only available after six months. Although the number of registered vacancies with the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) can also provide timely information on the labor demand, it only gives a vague indication of the number of new jobs that have been realized.

The ifo Employment Barometer is designed to close this gap. Since 2002, it has been providing potentially valuable information on the current state of the labor market with survey-based data on the demand for labor. The ifo Employment Barometer is calculated by the ifo Institute exclusively for the Handelsblatt. This is based on approximately 9,000 monthly reports from companies in the manufacturing, construction, trade, and service sectors, whereby the companies are asked to communicate their workforce plans for the next three months.