The Conference Board Employment Trends index rose for the fifth consecutive month in January. The index moved up a percentage point to 93.2 from December’s 92.3, which indicates job growth could be on the way, according to an associate director for Conference Board.

“The continued rise in the ETI makes us more optimistic that job growth will resume in the first quarter of 2010,” said Gad Levanon , associate director of macroeconomic research at The Conference Board. “The improvement is widespread across all eight components. In particular Friday’s large decline in the number of involuntary part-time workers was the first time this component showed a strong signal of improvement.”

The index does remain down 0.7 percent compared to January 2009.

Six of the eight components had positive results, which includes the percentage of respondents who say they find “jobs hard to get,” number of temporary employees, part-time workers for economic reasons, job openings, industrial production and real manufacturing and trade sales.

The other two index components are initial claims for unemployment insurance and the percentage of firms with positions they are unable to fill.  The Employment Trends Index aggregates data from the eight indicators provided by The Conference Board, the federal government and other sources.

The Conference Board publishes the Employment Trends index each month following the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.