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Wary Employers Turn to Temp Workers
Two-year-old article. Archiving for use in the monthly employment reports.
3:06 pm ET
Oct 22, 2013
Employment
Wary Employers Turn to Temp Workers
By Brenda Cronin
The temporary-help business notched respectable gains in September but the industry is feeling businesses’ reluctance to commit to even short-term workers.
Staffing firms accounted for 20,000 of the 148,000 jobs the nation added last month, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The September jobs report—initially due for release Oct. 4—was delayed because of the federal government shutdown. Thus far in 2013, the staffing industry has added an average of 20,000 jobs a month.
September’s tally raises the industry’s share of all U.S. jobs to levels last seen in early 2000, said Richard Wahlquist, chief executive of the American Staffing Association, an industry group. In April of that year, temporary work accounted for 2.03% of all seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll positions. The share dropped to 1.34% as the recession was ending in mid-2009, and has climbed back to just above 2.02%, Mr. Wahlquist said.
However, businesses that learned to do more with less during the recession are slowing their pace of temporary hiring as the recovery enters its fifth year. “Every business I know is operating at a higher level of efficiency post-recession than they did prerecession,” Mr. Wahlquist said. “American businesses just have not had a sufficient increase in demand for products and services to add big numbers of workers.”
Oct 22, 2013
Employment
Wary Employers Turn to Temp Workers
By Brenda Cronin
The temporary-help business notched respectable gains in September but the industry is feeling businesses’ reluctance to commit to even short-term workers.
Staffing firms accounted for 20,000 of the 148,000 jobs the nation added last month, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The September jobs report—initially due for release Oct. 4—was delayed because of the federal government shutdown. Thus far in 2013, the staffing industry has added an average of 20,000 jobs a month.
September’s tally raises the industry’s share of all U.S. jobs to levels last seen in early 2000, said Richard Wahlquist, chief executive of the American Staffing Association, an industry group. In April of that year, temporary work accounted for 2.03% of all seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll positions. The share dropped to 1.34% as the recession was ending in mid-2009, and has climbed back to just above 2.02%, Mr. Wahlquist said.
However, businesses that learned to do more with less during the recession are slowing their pace of temporary hiring as the recovery enters its fifth year. “Every business I know is operating at a higher level of efficiency post-recession than they did prerecession,” Mr. Wahlquist said. “American businesses just have not had a sufficient increase in demand for products and services to add big numbers of workers.”
