The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased in February for the fifth consecutive month. The index now stands at 101.7, up from January’s revised figure of 100.1. The index is up over 8 percent from a year ago.

Says Gad Levanon, Associate Director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board: “In the past half year, the economy has been adding, on average, about 110,000 jobs per month. The strong growth in the Employment Trends Index suggests that the pickup in jobs may accelerate in the next couple of quarters. However, with a shrinking government, a stagnant construction sector, and a manufacturing recovery that has only a small impact on overall employment, overall job growth will still be modest.”

This month’s increase in the ETI was driven by positive contributions from seven out of the eight components. The improving indicators included Consumer Confidence “Jobs Hard to Get,” Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Number of Temporary Employees, Part-Time Workers for Economic Reasons, Industrial Production and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales.

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.