Written by Steven Hansen
The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index – which forecasts employment for the next 6 months recovered marginally for the fifth month after the coronavirus crash with the authors saying “The labor market has rebounded better than expected, but with the virus still proliferating, it will not be able to return to its full capacity any time soon“.
Analyst Opinion of Conference Board’s Employment Index
Econintersect evaluates the 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 by 1.2 % month-over-month and a negative 50.2 % year-over-year. The Econintersect employment index also remains in deep negative territory. Both of these indices are predicting softer job growth 6 months from now – however, because the decline was so rapid, it is likely the rebound will continue for the next few months. The bottom line is that I doubt you can forecast using traditional methods what employment will look like six months from today as we are living in a whole different world.
From the Conference Board:
The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ (ETI) increased in September, following increases in May, June, July, and August. The index now stands at 54.80, up from 53.30 (an upward revision) in August. “The Employment Trends Index increased again in September, but over the last two months its gains have been more modest, indicating that job growth may be slowing down,” said Gad Levanon, Head of The Conference Board Labor Markets Institute. “The labor market has rebounded better than expected, but with the virus still proliferating, it will not be able to return to its full capacity any time soon. Many companies are restructuring their organizations and layoff rates are high. Despite the US economy growing more slowly, it may still be able to generate a million new jobs by year’s end.”
September’s increase was fueled by positive contributions from all eight components. From the largest positive contributor to the smallest, the components were: the Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers; Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance; the Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find “Jobs Hard to Get”; Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales; the Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now; Job Openings; the Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry; and Industrial Production.
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To add context to this index, the following graph compares BLS non-farm payrolls, the Econintersect Employment Index, and The Conference Board ETI. Econintersect uses non-labor and mostly non-monetary economic pulse points in constructing its index, while The Conference Board uses mostly elements of employment data.
The graph above offsets the Conference Board ETI by 6 months.
Caveats on the Employment Indices
According to the Conference Board:
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)
- Part-Time Workers for Economic Reasons (BLS)
- Job Openings (BLS)
- Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board)
- Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)
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