The Conference Board’s employment trends undex grew to 107.46 in February from an upwardly revised 105.99 in January, originally reported as 105.81, and is up 6.1% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
“The acceleration in the ETI suggests that rapid job growth is likely to continue in the next several months, despite modest improvements in demand and production,” said Gad Levanon, associate director of macroeconomic research at the board. “In the past year output per hour of work grew very slowly. If this trend continues, employment growth could remain robust even if GDP continues to grow at a modest 2% to 2.5%, as we expect.”
The increase in the ETI was driven by positive contributions from seven of the eight components. The improving indicators include: percentage of respondents who say they find “jobs hard to get,” number of employees hired by the temporary-help industry, initial claims for unemployment insurance, industrial production, real manufacturing and trade sale, part-time workers for economic reasons, and job openings.
The only negative contributor this month was the percentage of firms with positions they are not able to fill right now.
