NEW YORK – The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index (ETI) rose to 101.7 in February from a downwardly revised 100.1 in January, originally reported as 100.5, and is up 8% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
"In the past half year, the economy has been adding, on average, about 110,000 jobs per month. The strong growth in the Employment Trends Index suggests that the pickup in jobs may accelerate in the next couple of quarters," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. " However, with a shrinking government, a stagnant construction sector, and a manufacturing recovery that has only a small impact on overall employment, overall job growth will still be modest."
February’s increase in the ETI, was driven by positive contributions from seven out of the eight components. The improving indicators included Consumer Confidence “Jobs Hard to Get,” Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Number of Temporary Employees, Part-Time Workers for Economic Reasons, 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).
