The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) grew to 131.394 in February from a downwardly revised 129.91 in January, and is up 3.1% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
The January number was originally reported as 130.04.
"The Employment Trends Index increased sharply in February, with positive contributions from each of its eight components, providing more evidence that job growth is accelerating," said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "It seems that higher business confidence is carrying over to hiring. As a result, in 2017 labor supply constraints will be strongly felt across many industries and locations."
The rise in ETI was driven by positive contributions from all 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, number of employees hired by the temporary-help industry, job openings, industrial production, real manufacturing and trade sales, and the ratio of involuntarily part-time to all part-time workers, 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.
