The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased in January for the fourth consecutive month. The index now stands at 100.5, up from December’s revised figure of 100.3. The index is up 7 percent from a year ago.


Says Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board: “Despite anemic job gains in January, the Employment Trends Index suggests that employment growth is poised to accelerate. Both ‘hard’ economic data as well as confidence measures have improved, and since employment growth typically lags, we expect larger numbers of jobs to be added back into the economy in the coming months.”

This month’s increase in the ETI was driven by positive contributions from four out of the eight components plus one neutral, which is Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now. The improving indicators included Consumer Confidence “Jobs Hard to Get,” Part-Time Workers for Economic Reasons, Job Openings and Industrial Production.

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 so-called “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)

- Part-Time Workers for Economic Reasons (BLS)
Job Openings (BLS)

- Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board)

- Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)