ASA Staffing Index Surges 15% From Year Ago
According to the American Staffing Association (ASA):1. "Temporary Help Employment Is a Strong Coincident Economic Indicator When the Economy Is Emerging From a Recession — A sustained upturn in staffing jobs would signal the end of the current recession."
2. "Temporary Help Employment Is a Leading Indicator for Nonfarm Employment - Staffing job trends lead nonfarm employment by three months when the economy is emerging from a recession and by six months during periods of normal economic growth."
From the ASA's most recent report:
"Staffing employment in March is 15% higher than in the same month last year, according to the ASA Staffing Index (see chart above). The index for March is 83, up from 80 for February, suggesting that staffing employment has increased almost 4% over the past month. Staffing payrolls have shown steady growth over the past five weeks."
Other highlights:
1. Since the first of the year, the ASA Staffing Index has increased or remained flat in every week except one.
2. For the last 17 weeks going back to last November, the ASA staffing increased from the same week in the previous year, following 80 consecutive weeks of annual percentage decreases that started in May 2008.
As I reported earlier, today's BLS report showed a record 6-month increase of 312,600 temporary workers from October 2009 to March 2010. Along with the recent strong improvement in the ASA Staffing Index, these two positive trends in temporary hiring provide convincing evidence that the labor market is gradually improving, and as leading indicators suggest a continuation of the employment gains that started in March (162,000 jobs).
In the early stages of economic recovery, employers remain cautious in their hiring decisions, and use temporary workers initially to meet higher demand for their products. As the current economic rebound gains greater momentum and employers become more confident about a continued economic expansion, they'll start hiring permanent workers - which will bring down the jobless rate in the coming months.
5 Comments:
The question is if it converts given the ability to construct and maintain a captive market w/ permatemps. No need to improve if you can dispose of criticism.
Yes, that is a bad thing.
To that end, this economy's made a LOT of long-term unemployed. I'm not sure that the current (and highly inaccurate) interpretation of that is "damaged goods"(regardless of skill level).
That should be an issue of concern. That is, where do they go, even if they have maintained highly transferable skillsets? To that end, implying that they are damaged goods (and avoiding hiring them by time alone) makes them worse.
Temp agencies have been worthless at that end given the deluge of replies. Yes, I've tried them. Only would do so again if there was a chance to work w/ them towards meaningful results.
and yet again, u6 is up
The U.S. jobless rate was unchanged at 9.7% in March, flat from the previous month, but the government’s broader measure of unemployment ticked up for the second month in a row, rising 0.1 percentage point to 16.9%.
Too bad unproductive college professors don't get laid off and have to take temp jobs. Then they wouldn't be so keen on declaring economic recovery.
Too bad unproductive college professors don't get laid off and have to take temp jobs. Then they wouldn't be so keen on declaring economic recovery.
It's all in how you define productivity.
Permatemping, that's not a valid answer to any employment question(even if semi-permanent).
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