The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index – which forecasts employment for the next 6 months marginally declined with the author’s saying “Despite this month’s decline – the result of just two components – the index remains on a solid upward trend, and has been growing rapidly in recent months“.

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 with our own employment index. The year-over-year index growth rate accelerated 1.7 % month-over-month and 6.9 % year-over-year.

From the Conference Board:

The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) declined in September, following an increase in August. The index now stands at 110.77, down from 111.18 (an upward revision) in August. The change represents a 6.7 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.

“Despite this month’s decline – the result of just two components – the index remains on a solid upward trend, and has been growing rapidly in recent months,” said Gad Levanon, Chief Economist, North America, at The Conference Board. “The US economy is very strong now. Demand for workers is likely to continue growing rapidly in the coming quarters, but with the unemployment rate now at 3.7 percent, recruiters have their work cut out for them. They will have to bring more people off the sidelines faster. In the meantime, businesses will have to squeeze more out of their current workers, either by increasing working hours or raising labor productivity. Labor market tightness varies across occupations and geographies. However, for the nation we expect the unemployment rate to go down to 3.5 percent or even lower in 2019. We also expect labor force participation and productivity to gradually increase, and wages to further accelerate”.

September’s decrease in the ETI was fueled by negative contributions from two of the eight components. From the largest negative contributor to the smallest, these were: the Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers and the Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find “Jobs Hard to Get”.