NEW YORK – The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index (ETI) rose 0.3% to 93.5 in February, from an unrevised 1.0% jump to 93.2 in January, and is up 13.4% in the past six months, the highest six-month growth rate since 1994, the group announced today.
"The continued rise in the ETI suggests that job growth is about to begin," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "The past two jobless recoveries in 1991 and 2002 were a result of a continuous decline in manufacturing employment. This time, the strong recovery in manufacturing production has already led to two consecutive monthly increases in manufacturing employment. We are likely to see this trend continue over the next several months, which will contribute to overall job growth."
February's rise in the ETI was driven by positive contributions from half of its eight components: number of temporary employees, job openings, industrial production, and real manufacturing and trade sales, the Conference Board said in a release.
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).
