The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) grew to 129.96 in November from a downwardly revised 128.95 in October, and is up 2.7% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
The September number was originally reported as 128.97.
"The Employment Trends Index is showing some signs of acceleration, suggesting that employment growth will not slow down further in the coming months," said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "Moderate employment growth will be enough to make the labor market even tighter, leading to more visible acceleration in wages and inflation."
The rise in ETI was driven by positive contributions from six of its eight components.
The increasing indicators — from the largest contributor to the smallest — were ratio of involuntarily part-time to all part-time workers, percentage of firms with positions not able to fill right now, initial claims for unemployment insurance, real manufacturing and trade sales, number of employees hired by the temporary-help industry, and industrial production, 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).
