Conference Board's Employment Trends Index Rises to 132.64

A basket of U.S. employment indicators increased in April, suggesting employers are adding jobs at an accelerating pace.

The Conference Board said its employment trends index rose to 132.64 in April from 131.58 in March. The April figure was 4.1% higher than last year.

The board's employment trends index, which seeks to show employment trends more clearly by filtering out the volatility of monthly data, is an aggregate of eight indicators, including jobless claims, job-openings data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and industrial production figures from the Federal Reserve.

The report follows the April jobs report released Friday by the U.S. Labor Department, which showed U.S. employers hiring at a steady clip and the jobless rate falling to its lowest level in nearly a decade.

"A tight labor market is about to get much tighter, with solid employment growth occurring at a time when there is almost no growth in the working-age population," said Gad Levanon, chief economist, North America, at The Conference Board.

He added that the rapid expansion of the index suggests that job growth will continue into the summer.

In April, seven of the basket's gauges rose, driven by the ratio of involuntary part-time workers to part-time workers.

Write to Imani Moise at imani.moise@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 08, 2017 10:55 ET (14:55 GMT)