Gallup's Job Creation Index showed a flat job market for September, with conditions basically unchanged since May.
The index was +9 for September, barely in positive territory. The Job Creation index is calculated by subtracting the percentage of companies firing/laying off workers from those that are hiring employees. For September, 29 percent of Americans said their companies were hiring and 20 percent said they were letting people go. Since May, the hiring number has been 28 or 29 percent and the firing number has been 20 or 21 percent.
It's an improvement from a year ago when the index stood at zero, but still well below September 2008's +16.