The Conference Board Employment Trends Index increased in August, posting a monthly gainfor only the second time this year, and the organization said it expects the Fed to begin cutting interest rates at its meeting later this month. In addition, the organization noted that growth in the employment index can portend growth in employment.

Overall, the index rose to a reading of 109.04 in August from July’s downwardly revised reading of 108.71.

“The ETI rose in August, recording just its second monthly gain of 2024,” Mitchell Barnes, economist at The Conference Board, said in a press release.

“In the context of labor market data that is broadly softening, the improvement in the ETI is a positive indication that the pace of labor market slowdown remains sustainable ahead of September’s Fed meeting, where we expect the interest rate cutting cycle to begin,” Barnes said. “Though some ETI components have weakened, August’s gains put the index back above the level it averaged in 2019 — which at the time was considered a historically hot labor market.”

Still, the measure pointed for challenges to jobseekers not already employed. One component of the ETI — the share of respondents who report “jobs are hard to get” in The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey — rose to 16.4% in August from 11% at the start of this year.

August’s increase in the ETI was driven by positive contributions from four of its eight components: real manufacturing and trade sales, job openings, initial claims for unemployment insurance and industrial production.

The three other components are the percentage for firms with positions not able to fill right now from the National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation, the number of employees hired by the temp help industry from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the rate of involuntarily part-time to all part-time workers from the BLS.