The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) gained to 123.24 in November from a downwardly revised 122.80 in October, and is up 6.1% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
The October number was originally reported as 123.09.
"The Employment Trends Index increased for the 11th straight month in November, and recent solid improvements suggest that strong job growth is likely to continue into early next year," said Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "We will probably reach the natural rate of unemployment, 5.5 percent, within a few months, and these tighter labor market conditions should lead to acceleration in wage growth."
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 industrial production, ratio of involuntarily part-time to all part-time workers, number of temporary employees, real manufacturing and trade sales, and job openings, 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).
