The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) grew to 130.04 in January from a downwardly revised 129.73 in December, and is up 2.4% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
The December number was originally reported as 129.96.
"The continued growth in the Employment Trends Index suggests that job growth will remain solid and perhaps even accelerate in early 2017," said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "In both business confidence surveys and hard data, it appears that businesses are becoming more optimistic and are more willing to expand their workforce."
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 percentage of respondents who say they find "jobs hard to get," initial claims for unemployment insurance, percentage of firms with positions not able to fill right now, industrial production, number of employees hired by the temporary-help industry, and real manufacturing and trade sales, 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).
