The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) Increased in June

NEW YORK, July 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased in June, after declining in May. The index now stands at 128.13, up from 126.42 (a downward revision) in May. The change represents a 1.8 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.

"The Employment Trends Index has been moving sideways in the first half of 2016, suggesting only moderate job growth in the coming months," said Gad Levanon, Chief Economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "In such an uncertain political and economic environment, U.S. businesses, which in total have been experiencing shrinking profits for over a year, are unlikely to rapidly expand their payrolls."

June's increase in the ETI was fueled by positive contributions from all eight components. In order from the largest positive contributor to the smallest, these were: Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers, Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find "Jobs Hard to Get," Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales, Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry, Industrial Production, and Job Openings.

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)**

*Statistical imputation for the recent month
**Statistical imputation for two most recent months

The Conference Board publishes the Employment Trends Index monthly, at 10 a.m. ET on the Monday that follows each Friday release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation report. The technical notes to this series are available on The Conference Board website: http://www.conference-board.org/data/eti.cfm.

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SOURCE The Conference Board

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