The Conference Board said on Monday that its Employment Trends Index rose to 110.88 in August from a downwardly revised 109.58 in July. The July index was originally reported at 109.89.
The index now stand 6.9% higher than it did in August 2017.
“The employment trends index continues to accelerate, with this month’s year-over-year increase being the strongest since May 2012,” Gad Levanon, the board’s chief economist in North America, said in a release. “This supports our projections for strong economic growth in the coming year, suggesting that demand for labor is likely to remain strong. To meet this demand, employers must draw more people back into the labor force, especially in blue-collar occupations, where the labor market is increasingly tight.”
All eight components of the index were higher last month. From the largest to the smallest, these were: the percentage of respondents who say they find “jobs hard to get;” the ratio of involuntarily part-time to all part-time workers; initial claims for unemployment insurance; real manufacturing and trade sales; the percentage of firms with positions not able to fill right now; number of employees hired by the temporary-help industry; industrial production; and job openings.
The ETI aggregates these labor-market indicators, each of which has proven accurate in its own area, into a composite index which shows underlying trends more clearly.
