The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) gained to 114.78 in September from an upwardly revised 113.98 in August, initially reported as 113.54, and is up 4.5% from a year ago, the group announced Wednesday.
"The Employment Trends Index accelerated in August and September, with improvements across all eight components during these two months," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "In contrast to the gloomy headlines from Tuesday's jobs report, the ETI signals upward momentum in labor market conditions in the months ahead."
The gain in ETI was driven by positive contributions from seven of its eight components. The increasing indicators — from the largest positive contributor to the smallest — were initial claims for unemployment insurance, number of temporary employees, percentage of firms with positions not able to fill right now, industrial production, consumer confidence survey percentage of respondents who say they find "jobs hard to get," real manufacturing and trade sales, and job openings, according to the Conference Board.
The ETI aggregates eight labor-market indicators, each of which has proven accurate in its own area. Aggregating individual indicators into a composite index filters out so-called "noise" to show underlying trends more clearly.
The eight labor-market indicators aggregated into the ETI 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); Part-time Workers for Economic Reasons (BLS); Job Openings (BLS); Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board); and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis).
