Employer Survey
The results of the employer survey are based on 502 telephone and online interviews with senior human resources executives at U.S. companies conducted between March 21 and April 27, 2005. Companies were selected from a list provided by Dun & Bradstreet and the sample was stratified to ensure a certain number of interviews in each revenue category. The data was weighted by number of employees so that the total sample reflects the distribution of employees across company size. In theory, with a probability sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent certainty that the results have a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points of what they would be if the entire population of senior human resources executives at U.S. companies had been polled with complete accuracy. Sampling error for the various sub-samples is higher and varies.

Employee Surveys
Data on U.S. employed adults was gathered from the Harris Interactive QuickQuery^SM online omnibus conducted monthly by Harris Interactive^® on behalf of Spherion Corporation. From May through September 2005, each wave of the monthly Spherion^® Employment Report consisted of several core questions used to measure employee confidence as well as unique questions designed to measure concepts also examined in the employer survey. Sample sizes for the monthly Spherion Employment Report vary between 2,500 and 3,100 among U.S. adults 18 or older who are employed. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, income, education and region were weighted where necessary to
bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online. In theory, with probability samples of this size, one can say with 95 percent certainty that the overall results have a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points of what they would be if the entire U.S. population of employed adults had been polled with complete accuracy. Sampling error for the various sub-samples is higher and varies. This online sample is not a probability sample.