NEW YORK, Oct. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) decreased again in September, following a downward revision in August. The index now stands at 107.86, down from the revised figure of 108.23 in August. The September figure is 5.4 percent higher than a year ago.
"In September, the Employment Trends Index declined for the third time in four months, suggesting that employment growth will weaken further in the fourth quarter," said Gad Levanon, Director of Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. "The U.S. economy entered a soft patch in the spring and the result has been lackluster job growth, which is likely to continue through the first half of 2013."
September's decline in the ETI was driven by negative contributions from five of the eight components. The weakening indicators – beginning with the largest negative contributor – were Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers, Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Number of Temporary Employees 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.
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*Statistical imputation for the recent month
**Statistical imputation for two most recent months
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