NEW YORK – The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index (ETI) rose to 100.0 in June from a downwardly revised 99.5 in May, originally reported as 99.7, and is up 5.4% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
"The behavior of the Employment Trends Index in recent months is consistent with weak job growth, rather than an outright decline," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. " The abysmal uptick in employment in the past two months is not just a reaction to the slowdown in economic activity in the first half of 2011, but also a result of employers becoming downbeat about their hiring needs in the coming months."
June’s increase in the ETI, was driven by positive contributions from three out of the eight components. The improving indicators include Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales, 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 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).
