NEW YORK – The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index (ETI) grew to 104.32 in December from a downwardly revised 103.64 in November, originally reported as 103.70, and is up 4.7% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
"Job growth is picking up some steam in the U.S.," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "The Employment Trends Index has been signaling this growth for three straight months now. However, last Friday’s employment data — with a reported gain of 200,000 jobs in December — likely overstates the trend. We don’t expect overall economic activity to grow fast enough to sustain such rapid job gains throughout the first half of 2012."
The increase in the ETI, was driven by positive contributions from six of the eight components. The improving indicators include “Jobs Hard to Get” responses from The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Survey, Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Part-Time Workers for Economic Reasons, 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).
