American Staffing Association (02/03/14)

At an event at the White House on Friday, President Obama announced that a broad coalition of leading businesses and associations, including ASA, had committed to promoting best practices and voluntary action to help unemployed Americans find jobs.

“The American Staffing Association supports the White House initiative to promote best practices for recruiting and hiring the long-term unemployed,” says Richard Wahlquist, ASA president and chief executive officer. “Staffing firms are uniquely positioned to help unemployed individuals get back on the ladder of success. ASA members are committed to creating employment opportunities and putting qualified people to work, without regard to their unemployment status or the duration of time they’ve been unemployed.”

PR Newswire (02/03/14)

Seaton, a Chicago-based outsourced provider of human capital management, announced it has acquired HRX, a recruitment process outsourcing provider headquartered in Sydney, Australia. HRX will join Seaton’s operating brands, which include Staff Management|SMX, PeopleScout, and StudentScout, and will be known as HRX, a PeopleScout Co.

Wall Street Journal (02/03/14) Jon Hilsenrath; Victoria McGrane

Incoming U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen likely will face questions about why U.S. unemployment levels are falling so quickly and whether the central bank should intervene. The U.S. jobless rate was 6.7% in December. The Fed has said it would not raise short-term interest rates from near zero until the jobless rate falls to at least 6.5%, which could become a reality soon. The central bank has said it could maintain the ultra-low rates beyond the 6.5% jobless rate if other economic indicators are weak, which means rate increases are unlikely in the near future, say experts. If rates are kept low too long, however, inflation could rise significantly and financial bubbles could surface; but if rates are moved upward too soon, recovery could slow.

Forbes (01/31/14) David Lariviere

With the average National Football League career lasting only 4.6 years, most players have not earned enough money to retire after their football careers end. A new staffing firm, TEAM Services, has been opened to place former professional athletes in crowd management jobs serving the athletic and entertainment industry. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with branch offices in Cincinnati and New Orleans and plans to expand elsewhere within a year.

Anthony Muñoz, a Hall of Famer and 11-time Pro-Bowler who is co-managing the Cincinnati office with his son, says professional athletes generally do not have time to develop workforce skills while they are playing sports, making it difficult for them to find jobs after their sports careers end. “They’re trying to compete with people their own age who have already been working in business for several years so those people have a great advantage,” he says.