The Conference Board Employment Trends Index increased in February to 131.4, up from 129.9 in January. This represents a 3.1 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.
February’s increase in the ETI was fueled by positive contributions from all 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, number of employees hired by the temporary-help industry, job openings, industrial production, real manufacturing and trade sales, and the ratio of involuntarily part-time to all part-time workers.
