“Employment in temporary help services continued to trend up (+10,000) and has grown by 216,000 over the past year,” according to Erica L. Groshen, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, commenting on the June jobs report released today. Seasonally adjusted staffing employment was up 0.4% over May and 8.1% over June of last year. While year-to-year growth for the month was the lowest since November, according to BLS, the average over the past eight months has been a robust 8.7%.

Nonseasonally adjusted BLS data, which estimate the actual number of jobs in the economy, indicated that staffing employment increased by 31,400 in June, up 1.1% from May. On a year-to-year basis, there were 8.2% more staffing employees in June 2014 than in the same month last year.

“The continued strength of staffing employment growth reflects continued improvement in overall economic growth,” says Richard Wahlquist, president and chief executive officer of the American Staffing Association. “The especially good news for job seekers is that staffing and recruiting firms are reporting increases in requests from businesses across many sectors for candidates to fill permanent positions.”

The unemployment rate declined from 6.3% in May to 6.1% in June.