NEW YORK – The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index (ETI) rose 0.7% to 89.3 in October, from a revised 0.5% jump to 88.7 in September, originally reported as a 0.3% increase to 88.5, and is down 13.2% from a year ago, the group announced today.
“The Employment Trends Index has likely turned a corner in September, and the historical relationship between the index and employment suggests that job losses will end in early 2010,” said Gad Levanon, senior economist at The Conference Board. “While layoffs have certainly declined in recent months, we still expect to see employers adding hours to their existing workforce before hiring will strongly increase," noted Levanon.
Half the the components of the index were better in October, The Conference Board said. The improving indicators were initial claims for unemployment insurance, number of temporary employees, industrial production and real manufacturing and trade sales.
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).
