The Conference Board Employment Trends Index Increases In April

May 5, 2014

The Conference Board Employment Trends Index increased in April.  The index now stands at 118,000, up from 117.77 (an upward revision) in March.  This represents a 5.5 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.

“April’s increase in the Employment Trends Index, and continued improvement in recent months, is signaling solid growth through the summer,” said Gad Levanon, Director of Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board.  “Despite the disappointing GDP figure for the first quarter, job growth remains robust and when coupled with the massive retirement of baby boomers will result in a continued rapid decline in the unemployment rate.”

April’s increase in the ETI was driven by positive contributions from five 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, Number of Temporary Employees, Industrial Production, Job Openings, and Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance.

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 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• Job Openings (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board)
• Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)

Source: The Conference Board