The Conference Board Employment Trends Index decreased in August to 128, down from 128.4 in July. This represents a 0.8 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.
“The Employment Trends Index is consistent with moderating job growth in the second half of 2016,” said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, at The Conference Board. “With the ongoing massive retirement of baby boomers, even moderate job growth is enough to continue to tighten the US labor market.”
August’s decrease in the ETI was fueled by negative contributions from seven of the eight components. In order from the largest negative contributor to the smallest, these were: Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find “Jobs Hard to Get,” Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers, Job Openings, Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Industrial Production, Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales, and the Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry.
