The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) rose to 109.89 in July from a downwardly revised 108.72 in June, first reported as 108.94, and is up 5.4% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
The base year of the composite index is 2016=100.
"The growth in the Employment Trends Index remains strong, supported by positive contributions from all of its components," said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "We expect economic activity to remain strong in the coming months, and the rapid expansion of employment should continue despite the very tight labor market."
The increasing indicators — from the largest contributor to the smallest — were: the ratio of involuntarily part-time to all part-time workers, initial claims for unemployment insurance, number of employees hired by the temporary-help industry, industrial production, job openings, real manufacturing and trade sales, the percentage of firms with positions not able to fill right now, and the percentage of respondents who say they find “jobs hard to get,” 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.
