Reuters (03/09/12) Nick Zieminski

Companies that provide temporary labor are seeing more contract workers hired as permanent employees, in a sign job gains may be broadening as U.S. employers gain confidence in the recovery, staffing executives report. The staffing sector added 45,000 jobs in February, while temporary job gains in January and December were stronger than initially estimated, data from the U.S. Department of Labor showed. The percentage of temporary workers in the U.S. labor force, at 1.86%, marked the eighth straight monthly increase. Employment analysts expect that metric to pass its April 2000 peak above 2.0% as more employers embrace temporary labor in an uncertain economic climate.

Companies are using temporary employees to try out candidates for permanent jobs, says Jeff Joerres, chief executive of ManpowerGroup. “Our temporary to permanent conversions are very high,” Joerres says. Taking on temporary workers “also is a way of being agile and cautious, so if something happens in the Middle East and demand goes down precipitously, (they) have a way to adjust without affecting the permanent work force.” Small and mid-size companies are stepping up use of temporary workers as easier access to credit allows them to invest, notes Randstad employment analyst Joanie Ruge. “It is robust,” Ruge says. “Companies are going to look for more flexibility in their work force. They will expand and contract as their demand fluctuates.”

Joel Capperella, vice president of Yoh, points out that wages are still flat. A Yoh index of wages for skilled temporary workers found only a 1% gain over a year ago. “Wages aren’t really moving a whole lot,” Capperella says. “Clients of our services are in the driver’s seat. Things are good but you have to temper it.”

Wall Street Journal (03/12/12) Jon Hilsenrath

The unemployment rate has fallen 0.7 percentage point from a year earlier, companies have expanded payrolls by more than 200,000 a month for the past three months, and the number of people filing claims for government unemployment benefits has fallen. Despite all this, the economy is barely growing, with many economists in the past few weeks having again reduced their estimates of growth. The economy by many estimates is on track to grow at an annual rate of less than 2% in the first three months of 2012.

Traditionally, economists have believed that when the economy grows faster than its long-run trend, the unemployment rate tends to fall by about half as much as the additional growth in percentage terms. So growth of 3.5% in a year—one percentage point above a long-run trend of 2.5%—would bring down the unemployment rate by a half percentage point in that year. However, that rule has been unreliable lately.

Christina Romer, President Barack Obama’s former chief economic adviser, has a theory for why the jobless rate rose more than predicted during the recession and why it has fallen more than the rule predicted since the recession: She believes that company managers were so shocked by the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 that they fired workers more aggressively than they would in a conventional downturn. Over the past six months, she continues, as fear and uncertainty have dissipated, firms appear to have reversed course and gone back toward more normal staffing levels. Romer worries that these overshoots might soon run their course and that the traditional rule will reassert itself, potentially keeping the unemployment rate at high levels because the economy isn’t growing fast enough to justify more hiring.

USA Today (03/12/12) Paul Davidson

Job prospects for younger workers are improving. In February, jobs for 25-to-34-year-olds rose by 116,000 to 30.5 million. The unemployment rate for these workers declined from 9% in January to 8.7% in February, the lowest level since January 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Meanwhile, the employment-to-population ratio for these workers rose from 74.5% to 74.7%.

MarketWatch (03/09/12)

Monster Worldwide Inc., parent company of ASA corporate partner Monster, reveals annual growth of 11% in its Employment Index U.S. in February. Positive annual growth trends were recorded in 19 of 20 industries, with transportation and warehousing up 36%, retail trade up 22%, wholesale trade up 22%, finance and insurance up 21%, and professional, scientific, and technical services up 17%; the biggest decline of 8% was recorded in public administration. Demand for workers increased in 22 of 23 occupational categories on a year-over-year basis, with transportation and material moving up 33%, legal up 23%, architecture and engineering up 23%, computer and mathematical up 19%, and management up 14%. Regionally, all 28 metro markets showed positive annual growth, ranging from 21% in Washington, DC, to 7% in Los Angeles.