NEW YORK – The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index (ETI) rose to 100.9 in February from a downwardly revised 100.3 in February, originally reported as 101.7, and is up 8% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
"The Employment Trends Index started signaling acceleration in employment growth late last year, which we are now experiencing," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "In the last six months, employment excluding construction and state and local government has been growing faster than almost any other 6-month period in the past decade. We do not expect a turnaround in those sectors, which are still lagging, nor do we forecast acceleration in overall economic growth in the next several quarters. As a result, employment growth is likely to continue growing at its current rate and not improve further for the rest of 2011."
March’s increase in the ETI, was driven by positive contributions from five out of the eight components. The improving indicators included Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Number of Temporary Employees, and three forecasted components, which are Job Openings, 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).
