- Prior was 106.69 (revised to 106.74)
Notably, this index flagged some weakness last month and that proved to be prescient (or lucky) as the weakness showed up in Friday’s non-farm payrolls report.
“The ETI rebounded in July after declining in May and June, suggesting
continued resilience in the labor market, despite the ‘low-hire,
low-fire’ backdrop,” said Conrad Qi, Economic Data Scientist Associate,
The Conference Board. “Nonetheless, the ETI remains only 0.6% above its
level one year ago, suggesting that payroll growth may remain modest in
the months ahead. Setting aside numerous special factors that caused
hiring volatility this year—including seasonal education worker cuts and
normalizing leisure and hospitality hiring after the FIFA World Cup,
which lowered non-farm payrolls by 23,000 in July—underlying job growth
remains modest but positive.”
Note that this is a composite indicator of data already released and is never a market mover but it’s a decent cross-check.
Two of the ETI’s eight components contributed negatively to the index in July:
- the Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers
- Industrial Production.
The following six components contributed positively:
- Percentage of Firms with Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now,
- Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance,
- Job Openings,
- Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales,
- Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find ‘Jobs Hard to Get,’ and
- Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry
This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.