The Conference Board's Employment Trends Index (ETI) fell to 129.96 in November from a downwardly revised 129.93 in November, and is up 2.2% from a year ago, the group announced Monday.
The November number was originally reported as 129.96.
"After strong growth over the previous three months, the Employment Trends Index declined slightly in the final month of 2016. However, the ETI's trend suggests that job growth will remain solid in early 2017," said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "And, employers have become more upbeat in recent months, suggesting the labor market may very well tighten faster than pre-recession expectations."
The drop in ETI was driven by negative contributions from five of its eight components.
The increasing indicators — from the largest contributor to the smallest — were percentage of respondents who say they find "jobs hard to get," percentage of firms with positions not able to fill right now, number of employees hired by the temporary-help industry, initial claims for unemployment insurance, and job openings, according to the Conference Board.
The ETI aggregates eight labor-market indicators, each of which has proven accurate in its own area. Aggregating individual indicators into a composite index filters out so-called "noise" to show underlying trends more clearly.
The eight labor-market indicators aggregated into the ETI 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); Part-time Workers for Economic Reasons (BLS); Job Openings (BLS); Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board); and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis).
