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Employment Trends Index increased in March to 131.43
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The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased in March, after a sharp increase in February. The index now stands at 131.43, up from 131.09 (a downward revision) in February. The change represents a 4.3 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.
“The Employment Trends Index continued to expand in March, suggesting that solid job growth will continue through the spring,” said Gad Levanon, Chief Economist, North America, at The Conference Board. “The surprisingly weak job growth in March is mostly noise in an otherwise healthy and tight labor market.”
March’s increase in the ETI was fueled by positive contributions from six of the eight components. In order from the largest positive contributor to the smallest, these were: Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales, Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers, Industrial Production, Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find “Jobs Hard to Get,” Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry, 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.
Posted: April 10, 2017 Monday 10:00 AM