The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index – which forecasts employment for the next 6 months improved, and its authors say “that job growth will remain solid and perhaps even accelerate in early 2017“.

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Analyst Opinion of Conference Board’s Employment Index

Econintersect evaluates year-over-year change of this index (which is different than the headline view) – as we do our own employment index. The year-over-year index growth rate was statisically unchanged from last month. Keep in mind that this index has been reset this month consistent with the revision of the BLS employment gains per their annual benchmarking.

Econintersect is forecasting modest improvement to the growth rate six months from now. Note that the Econintersect Employment Index is not based on employment data.

From the Conference Board:

The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased slightly in January, after declining in December. The index now stands at 130.04, up from 129.73(r) in December. The change represents a 2.4 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago. “

The continued growth in the Employment Trends Index suggests that job growth will remain solid and perhaps even accelerate in early 2017,” said Gad Levanon, Chief Economist, North America, at The Conference Board. “In both business confidence surveys and hard data, it appears that businesses are becoming more optimistic and are more willing to expand their workforce.”

January’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: Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find “Jobs Hard to Get,” Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Industrial Production, Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry, and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales