The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) gained to 117.52 in March from an upwardly revised 117.01 in February, and is up 5.1% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
The February number was originally reported as 116.39.
"The increase in the Employment Trends Index in the first quarter is signaling solid job growth in the coming months," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "With GDP forecasted to average 2.5 to 3.0 percent through the end of this year, there is little reason to expect employment growth to slow any time soon."
The gain in ETI was driven by positive contributions from half of its eight components. The increasing indicators - from the largest positive contributor to the smallest - were initial claims for unemployment insurance, industrial production, number of temporary employees, 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).
