Seasonally adjusted employment data released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that staffing firms added 9,500 new jobs from May to June (up 0.4%). In a year-to-year comparison, temporary help employment for the month was 6.7% higher than in June 2012.

Nonseasonally adjusted BLS data, which estimate the actual number of jobs in the economy, indicated that the staffing industry added 25,000 new jobs (up 0.9%) from May to June of this year. On a year-to-year basis, there were 6.0% more staffing employees in June than in the same month last year.

“In this slowly growing economy, businesses continue to strategically increase the size of their permanent and flexible work forces,” says Richard Wahlquist, president and chief executive officer of the American Staffing Association. “Staffing firms report that the rate of growth in demand for talent in several sectors has moderated compared with last year at this time.”

Overall U.S. nonfarm payroll employment increased by 195,000 jobs in June, and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 7.6%. Over the past 12 months, employment growth has averaged 182,000 jobs per month.

Sectors adding jobs to the economy included leisure and hospitality (+75,000), professional and business services (+53,000), retail trade (+37,000), health care (+20,000), and financial activities (+17,000). Federal government employment continued to trend down (-5,000) and has contracted by 65,000 jobs over the past 12 months. Employment in most other major industries showed little change over the month.