The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) fell to 132.74 in September from a downwardly revised 132.78 in August, first reported as 134.62, and is up 3.8% from a year ago, the group announced Tuesday.
"Several components that led to the decline in the Employment Trends Index in August and September were impacted by hurricanes Harvey and Irma," said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "The Employment Trends Index is expected to pick up again, signaling further employment growth and more wage pressures in the months ahead."
The drop in ETI was driven by “a large increase in the Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance 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 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).
