The Conference Board Employment Trends Index decreased in August, after increasing in the prior two months. The index now stands at 128.02, down from 128.44 (an upward revision) in July. The change 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.

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)

• Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers (BLS)

• Job Openings (BLS)

• Industrial Production (Federal Reserve Board)

• Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)