Solid Job Growth to Continue, According to The Conference Board

The current strong job growth should continue, despite a dip in certain employment indicators, The Conference Board reports.

According to the Board, The Conference Board Employment Trends Index (ETI) decreased in May, after five consecutive monthly gains.

The index now stands at 107.69, down from 108.00 (a downward revision) in April. The change represents a 3.9 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.

\"The decline in the Employment Trends Index in May is probably a reversion to trend after the very rapid increases in recent months,\" said Gad Levanon, Chief Economist, North America, at The Conference Board. \"With the economy growing well above trend, we expect solid job growth to continue despite the difficulty in filling job openings.\"

May\'s decline in the ETI was fueled by negative contributions from six out of the eight components.

From the largest negative contributor to the smallest, these were: The Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find \"Jobs Hard to Get,\" Job Openings, Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry, Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, and the Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers. Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales and Industrial Production made a positive contribution.

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.

Find out more at conference-board.org