and early 2009, as the financial crisis reached its height. The LMCI started improving in the second half of 2009, and the uneven pace of the ongoing labor market recovery is apparent at this time scale. Indeed, the LMCI captures several periods of sluggish improvement in the early parts of 2010, 2011, and 2012, which some dubbed the "spring swoons."5 The particularly marked slowdown in labor market improvement in the second quarter of 2012 stands out, as does the subsequent pick-up. Gains in the LMCI slowed a touch in the beginning of this year, likely reflecting unseasonably cold and snowy weather this winter, but the pace has picked up in recent months.

Chart 2: Average Monthly Change in LMCI since 2007

Over the recovery, as is typical, a few indicatorsand Gaoyan Tang. 2007. "A Principal Components Approach to Estimating Labor Market Pressure and Its Implications for Inflation." Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Public Policy Brief No.07-2.

Barnichon, Regis. 2010. "Building a Composite Help-Wanted Index." Economics Letters 109(3): 17578.

Davis, Steven J., R. Jason Faberman, and John Haltiwanger. 2012. "Labor Market Flows in the Cross Section and over Time." Journal of Monetary Economics 59(1): 118.

Hakkio, Craig S., and Jonathan L. Willis. 2013. "Assessing Labor Market Conditions: The Level of Activity and the Speed of Improvement." The Macro Bulletin, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, July 18.

Stock, James H., and Mark W. Watson. 2011. "Dynamic Factor Models." In The Oxford Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edited by Michael P. Clements and David F. Hendry. Oxford University Press.

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Chung, Hess, Bruce Fallick,