The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) rose to 106.93 in January from a downwardly revised 106.59 in December, first reported as 107.10, and is up 5.4% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
"The Employment Trends Index continues its solid path upwards and shows no sign of slowing down," said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "A strong US economy provides additional tailwinds to employment growth, bringing down the unemployment rate even further and encouraging more men and women to join the labor force."
The base year of the composite index was recently changed to 2016=100 from 2010=100.
The increasing indicators — from the largest contributor to the smallest — were: percentage of firms with positions not able to fill right now, industrial production, initial claims for unemployment insurance, real manufacturing and trade sales, and number of employees hired by the temporary-help industry, 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).
