American Staffing Association (10/22/13) Alexandra Karaer
Seasonally adjusted employment data released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that staffing firms added 20,200 new jobs from August to September (up 0.7%). In a year-to-year comparison, temporary help employment for the month was 9.0% higher than in September 2012. The BLS jobs report comes about two weeks later than originally scheduled due to the recent partial federal government shutdown.
Nonseasonally adjusted BLS data, which estimate the actual number of jobs in the economy, indicated that the staffing industry added 64,200 jobs (up 2.3%) from August to September of this year. On a year-to-year basis, there were 9.0% more staffing employees in September than in the same month last year.
BLS also provides both seasonal and nonseasonal employment estimates for search and placement firms, however these reports lag by one month. Tuesday, BLS reported that seasonal search and placement employment in August was down 0.7% from July, totaling 289,200 jobs for the month. In a year-to-year comparison, August employment was up 4.9% from the same month in 2012. Nonseasonally adjusted search and placement employment was up 0.2% from July to August, adding 294,200 new jobs. In a year-over-year comparison, nonseasonally adjusted employment for this staffing segment was up 4.9%.