The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) gained to 118.00 in April from an upwardly revised 117.77 in March, and is up 5.1% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
The March number was originally reported as 117.52.
"April's increase in the Employment Trends Index, and continued improvement in recent months, is signaling solid job growth through the summer," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "Despite the disappointing GDP figure for the first quarter, job growth remains robust and when coupled with the massive retirement of baby boomers will result in a continued rapid decline in the unemployment rate."
The gain in ETI was driven by positive contributions from five of its eight components. The increasing indicators - from the largest positive contributor to the smallest - were percentage of firms with positions not able to fill right now, number of temporary employees, industrial production, job openings, and initial claims for unemployment insurance, 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).
