Sunday, August 7, 2011

Staffing is Trending


As the staffing industry enters 2011, the overall economic report is positive. According to Staffing Industry Analyst, overall unemployment claims have gone down in the month of December. The U.S. total unemployment rate was down in December to 9.42%. Manufacturing and temporary help were among job sectors to gain jobs in December. In fact, the overall best performing U.S. industry market was temporary help services, with a job growth score of 94.

Trends in hours worked, which correlates to the reliance on temporary versus full-time workers, were steady from September to December but showed an upward trend on the whole for 2010 from 2009. Overtime hours worked per week in December 2010 were on par with trends from 2008 with nearly 4 hours of overtime worked.  

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that temporary jobs increased in December by 15,900. However, there was a weak overall employment report with just 103,000 new jobs in total and unemployment is likely to remain high for the foreseeable future. Most staffing firms are reporting sequential improvement, with the selling/recruiting difficulty ratio improving over the last nine months. This indicates that companies are more willing to explore contingent staffing solutions, and that staffing companies are seeing that candidates are harder to reach.

First and foremost staffing agencies should take advantage of the next few “good years”.  Several speakers and analysts stated that staffing firms need to:

   Invest in technology.
Now is the time to upgrade systems, automate where possible, and become more strategic.  Firms that have the proper internal systems and technology in place will be able to react faster, secure a bigger piece of the pie, and prepare their business for more challenging economic times coming in a few years.
   Invest in marketing.
As an industry, we spend only .4% of gross sales on marketing.  Robert Half on the other hand spent 1.2% during the recession.  They’re stronger, more respected, and secured a bigger share of the market.
   Invest in business efficiencies.
There are a lot of in-efficiencies in the traditional staffing and recruiting business model right now.  We need to determine where those issues are, and eliminate them.  Becoming more efficient will put less pressure on declining margins and also make your firm much more competitive.

Resources: American Staffing Association http://www.americanstaffing.net/statistics/bls.cfm

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