Index Shows Strong Positive Momentum
The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased in June. The index now stands at 119.62, up from 119.03 (an upward revision) in May. This represents a 6.3 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.
"The rapid increase in the Employment Trends Index in recent months suggests that strong job growth is likely to continue through the summer," said Gad Levanon, Director of Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "While the strong labor market signals an improvement in economic growth, the key factor is that the average productivity of workers will need to rise as well."
June's increase in the ETI was driven by positive contributions from seven of its eight components. In order from the largest positive contributor to the smallest, these were: Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales, Industrial Production, Number of Temporary Employees, Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find "Jobs Hard to Get," Job Openings, and Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers.
The Employment Trends Index aggregates eight labor-market indicators, each of which has proven accurate in its own area. Aggregating individual indicators into a composite index filters out "noise" to show underlying trends more clearly.
The eight labor-market indicators aggregated into the Employment Trends Index 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)
Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers (BLS)
Job Openings (BLS)**
Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board)*
Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)**
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