(The Conference Board: New York) -- The Conference Board Employment Trends Index (ETI) declined for the second month in a row in May 2011 to 99.7, down from April’s revised figure of 100.1. The May figure is up 5.3 percent from a year ago.

“Declines as we’ve seen in the Employment Trends Index in the last two months are usually associated with a slowdown in job growth,” says Gad Levanon, associate director, Macroeconomic Research, at The Conference Board. “We expect moderate job growth to continue, but it is becoming clear that employers are reacting to the growing uncertainty in the U.S. economy by slowing down hiring.”

This month’s decline in the ETI was driven by negative contributions from four out of the eight components. The weakening indicators include percentage of respondents who say they find “jobs hard to get,” percentage of firms with positions not able to fill right now, number of temporary employees, and real manufacturing and trade sales, which is a forecast component.

The 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 so-called “noise” to show underlying trends more clearly.

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