Conference Board ETI Dips to 113.65 in September

The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) slipped to 113.65 in September from a downwardly revised 114.68 in September, initially reported as 114.78, and is up 4.9% from a year ago, the group announced Tuesday.

"Like many other economic indicators, the October decline of the Employment Trends Index was partially due to the government shutdown," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "The latest job numbers do in fact show some strengthening in the employment trend. But as domestic demand was weaker than expected in the third quarter, we might see some moderation in employment growth in the coming months."

The drop in ETI was driven by negative contributions from four of its eight components. The decreasing indicators - from the largest negative contributor to the smallest - were initial claims for unemployment insurance, consumer confidence survey percentage of respondents who say they find "jobs hard to get," ratio of involuntarily part-time to all part-time workers, 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).

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