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

NEW YORK, April 9, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased in March, after increasing in February. The index now stands at 107.72, up from 107.31 (a downward revision) in February. The change represents a 5.5 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.

"The ETI continued its upward trend in March, suggesting that job growth will remain robust in the coming months," said Gad Levanon, Chief Economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "We interpret Friday's disappointing job numbers as noise in an otherwise fast-growing labor market."

March's increase in the ETI was fueled by positive contributions from five out of the eight components. From the largest positive contributor to the smallest, these were: Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers, Industrial Production, Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find "Jobs Hard to Get," 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 "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

Note: This month's Employment Trends Index reflects historical revisions of Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Job Openings, and Industrial Production.

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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