The Conference Board’s employment trends index slid to 100.6 in July from an upwardly revised 100.9 in June, originally reported as 100.0, and is up 4.0% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
“The employment trends index declined in three of the past four months, and is signaling employment growth of less than 100,000 per month through the end of 2011,” said Gad Levanon, associate director of macroeconomic research at the board. “Despite weak employment growth in recent months, [gross domestic product] has been growing even slower in the first half of 2011. There is simply not enough growth in production to warrant stronger hiring.”
July’s decrease in the ETI was driven by negative contributions from three out of the eight components. The weakening indicators include The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey “Jobs Hard to Get,” Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, and Job Openings, which is a forecasted component.
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 board’s Consumer Confidence Survey); Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance (the 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, Part-time Workers for Economic Reasons, and Job Openings (the Bureau of Labor Statistics); Industrial Production (the Federal Reserve Board); and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (the Bureau of Economic Analysis).
