Hiring of Temporary Employees Seen as a Positive Sign

A sign that employment across the country could be growing more in 2012 than in 2011 is the fact that employment at temporary staffing agencies across the country is growing. This observation was released last Friday in the national unemployment report, which showed the United States unemployment rate dropping to 8.6 percent in the month of November from 9 percent in October. These statistics were released by the Labor Department.

An interesting take on unemployment is the fact that the rate does not take into account the people who do not have a job but have given up looking for a job. Experts discussing temporary agencies say that those agencies are seeing increases in employment through their services.

Temporary help agencies, employment services, and agency staff are all included in the temporary employment services industry. In October, those areas featured employment of 119,300 in the state of Ohio, which was down from the 125,600 employed in October of 2010. This is good for a five percent decrease according to the United States Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“I believe companies are truly hesitant to bring on direct employment, but the needs are still there,” said Leigh Ann Pagnard, president of Cincinnati-based Belcan Staffing Solutions. “That’s something it’s just easier for the companies to do and it makes sense when you’re not sure how long the job will last.”

Pagnard also said that Belcan has already passed the amount of workers hired in 2011 than the number hired in 2010. Belcan has 20 commercial staffing locations throughout the United States that have employed 14,500 to date in 2011. This is compared to the 12,000 people employed by Belcan in 2010.

According to a report, the Employment and Sales Survey, released by American Staffing Association on November 21, an average of 2.82 million Americans worked at least one day at a temporary job in the third quarter of 2011. That number increased by 2.4 percent from the second quarter of 2011 and increased by 5.2 percent from the third quarter of 2010.

In the Cincinnati metro area, unemployment is sitting at 8.6 percent, with the numbers released by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. The unemployment rate for Butler County sits at 8.7 percent for the month of October.

The vice president of American Staffing Association, Steve Berchem, said that employment at staffing agencies indicates the health of the economy because the job levels at staffing agencies operate the same way as the economy.

Berchem also said that temporary workers are the first workers laid off when business slows down and then are the first workers hired back when business picks up once again. Contract and temporary employment are also evidences of total employment across the country. Berchem also explained that the trends seen in temporary employment will appear in overall employment roughly six months later.