The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index fell to 100.5 in April from an upwardly revised 101.1 in March, originally reported as 100.9, and is up 6% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
“While employment is growing at the fastest rate in years, the leading indicators for employment are decisively flashing yellow,” said Gad Levanon, associate director for macroeconomic research at the board.
“In April, the Employment Trends Index experienced the largest monthly decline in two years. It is unlikely that the current pace of job growth can be maintained in the months ahead.”
April’s decrease was driven by negative contributions from five out of the index’s eight components: initial claims for unemployment insurance, percentage of firms with positions they can’t fill right now, number of temporary employees, part-time workers for economic reasons, and job openings, which is a forecasted component.
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 background noise to show underlying trends more clearly.
The components aggregated into the ETI that didn’t decrease were: the percentage of respondents who say they find jobs “hard to get,” from the Conference Board’s consumer confidence survey; industrial production, from the Federal Reserve Board; and real manufacturing and trade sales, from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
