The Conference Board Employment Trends Index increased again in October, after increasing in September. The index now stands at 128.97, up from 128.29 (a downward revision) in September. The change represents a 1.0 percent gain in the ETI compared to a year ago.

"The Employment Trends Index increased moderately in recent months, suggesting solid job growth will continue through early 2017," said Gad Levanon, Chief Economist, North America, at The Conference Board. "The moderation in the ETI's pace of growth in recent months is typical, given the maturing of the labor market, and does not signal a significant slowdown in job growth."

October's improvement in the ETI was fueled by positive contributions from seven of the eight components. In order from the largest positive contributor to the smallest, these were: Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now, Industrial Production, Number of Employees Hired by the Temporary-Help Industry, Job Openings, Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find "Jobs Hard to Get," Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales, and Ratio of Involuntarily Part-time to All Part-time Workers.

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)**

*Statistical imputation for the recent month
**Statistical imputation for two most recent months