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

Rebounds from shutdown-led drop in October to hit new five-year high

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Dec 09, 2013, 10:00 ET

NEW YORK, Dec. 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased in November. The index now stands at 115.21, up from 113.64 (a downward revision) in October. The ETI figure for November is 5.3 percent higher than a year ago.

"Largely a reflection of the 16-day government shutdown, October's apparent decline in the Employment Trends Index was more than reversed by the large November increase," said Gad Levanon, Director of Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "Despite disappointing consumer-demand growth in recent quarters, the ETI is still signaling solid employment growth in the months ahead."

November's increase in the ETI was driven by positive contributions from all eight of its components. From the largest positive contributor to the smallest, these were: Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers, Industrial Production, Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales, Number of Temporary Employees, Consumer Confidence Survey^®Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find "Jobs Hard to Get," 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)**

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.

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

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