Jobs

Employment Trends Index Looks Less Positive Then Payrolls Report

Jon C. Ogg

Published: December 7, 2015 11:15 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 4:23 pm

The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index showed a decrease in November. Investors have this merely as a support or secondary view now that the U.S. Department of Labor has released its critical payrolls and unemployment rate in the Employment Situation report. Still, this is not quite as robust as what the Bureau of Labor Statistics might have indicated just on Friday.

Monday’s report showed that the Employment Trends Index fell to 128.69 in November, down from an upwardly revised 129.75 in October. Despite a dip from the prior month, the picture still looks better than a year ago. The change represents a 2.7% gain in the Employment Trends Index compared to last year.

The Employment Trends Index aggregates eight labor-market indicators. Each are believed to be accurate in its own area, and the aim is to filter out noise to show the underlying trends more clearly than perhaps just a payrolls and unemployment report.

November’s decrease in the Employment Trends Index was driven by negative contributions from five of the eight components. These negative aspects were from the following:

• Ratio of involuntarily part-time to all part-time workers
• Percentage of respondents who say they find jobs “hard to get”
• Job openings
• Initial claims for unemployment insurance
• Number of temporary employees

Five of eight components showing some weakness is not good. It is just one month, and the report from the prior month was revised higher. Still, the market wants to see continuation of good news rather than mixed news. After all, the Federal Reserve keeps telling the public that it wants to raise interest rates.

The Conference Board report said:

Despite the strong numbers on job creation in the past few months, the Employment Trends Index posted the largest one month decline since the Great Recession, with five of the eight components contributing negatively to the index, While two of the components – initial claims for unemployment and our forecast of job openings – suggest modest adverse developments, their levels are still healthy. However, the past month’s weakness in consumer confidence in job growth and the slowdown in temporary help needs careful watching. Overall, there is reason for caution to not linearly extrapolate the current strong growth into 2016.