Conference Board ETI Rises to 111.68 in April

The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) gained to 111.68 in April from an upwardly revised 111.61 in March, originally reported as 111.20, and is up 3.8% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.

"Despite weak economic activity, the Employment Trends index is still signaling moderate job growth in the coming months," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "On average, employment has grown almost as fast as GDP over the past three years, and that is likely to continue into the third quarter of 2013. As a result, the average labor productivity of American workers will struggle to improve until GDP growth accelerates."

The gain in ETI was driven by positive contributions from five of its eight components. The increasing indicators - from the largest positive contributor to the smallest - were Number of Temporary Employees, Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Job Openings, Industrial Production, and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales, 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).

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