The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased in September. The index now stands at 121.68, up from 121.32 (an upward revision) in August. This represents a 6.1 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.
“The Employment Trends Index increased for the ninth consecutive month, signaling solid job growth through year end,” said Gad Levanon, Director of Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. “A combination of positive and negative forces has been driving the rapid decline in the unemployment rate in recent years. Hiring is strong, but productivity growth is weak, and the participation rate continues to decline. None show signs of reversing.”
September’s increase in the ETI was driven by positive contributions from six of its eight components. In order from the largest positive contributor to the smallest, these were: Industrial Production, Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales, Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers, Number of Temporary Employees, and Job Openings.
The Employment Trends Index aggregates eight labor-market indicators, each of which has proven accurate in its own area. Aggregating individual indicators into a composite index filters out “noise” to show underlying trends more clearly.
The eight labor-market indicators aggregated into the Employment Trends Index include:
- Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find “Jobs Hard to Get” (The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey®)
- Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance (U.S. Department of Labor)
- Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now (© National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation)
- Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
- Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers (BLS)
- Job Openings (BLS)**
- Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board)*
- Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)**
The Conference Board publishes the Employment Trends Index monthly, at 10 a.m. ET on the Monday that follows each Friday release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation report. The technical notes to this series are available on The Conference Board website: http://www.conference-board.org/data/eti.cfm.
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