by Calculated Risk on 7/05/2021 09:57:00 AM

The employment diffusion indexes are useful in gauging how widespread job gains are in a given month.

The BLS diffusion index for total private employment was at 66.1 in June, up from 63.0 in May.

For manufacturing, the diffusion index was at 62.0, down from 63.3 in May.

Think of this as a measure of how widespread job gains or losses are across industries. The further from 50 (above or below), the more widespread the job losses or gains reported by the BLS.  From the BLS:

Figures are the percent of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment, where 50 percent indicates an equal balance between industries with increasing and decreasing employment.

Click on graph for larger image.

Both indexes declined sharply in March 2020, and collapsed to new record lows in April 2020 due to the impact from COVID-19.  Then the indexes increased as the economy bounced back.

Both indexes were solid in June, indicating job growth was widespread across industries.