Conference Board Employment Trends Index for September 2009

After a year and a half of declines, the Conference Board's Employment Trends index edged upward. The increase isn't much, only 0.3 percent from August, but after a steady decline since January 2008, even a small amount of positive is seen as good news. Hopefully the decline has been broken, but even if it is we have a tough road ahead on the jobs front: today's number is down 15.6 percent from a year ago, when the index had fallen for eight straight months.

Analysts at the Conference Board aren't sounding the victory cry just yet, either. "While the employment numbers reported by the government last Friday were certainly disappointing, The Conference Board Employment Trends Index™ suggests that the trend of declining job losses will continue," said Gad Levanon, Senior Economist at The Conference Board. "But the road to recovery is definitely going to be bumpy and may last unusually long, given the depth of the recession we have experienced."
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