and peaks late in the year—the industry’s normal cycle when the economy
is growing. See 2007 in Figure 3 and
quarterly trends in Figure 8.) In retrospect, the flatness of the index in the
first half of 2008 was indicative of a
weakening economy.
The index shows that staffing employment began to decline in the third quarter
of 2008. After Lehman Brothers Holdings filed for bankruptcy in September,
the index dropped rapidly.
The week of Dec. 15 was telling: In
what would normally have been one
of the busiest weeks of the year for the
staffing industry, temporary and contract
employment dropped 4.6%, knocking
three points off the index. By the end of
the year, the index had plunged to 69—
at the time its lowest value ever and 26
points lower than in June—equating to a
27% loss of jobs in just six months, most
of which occurred in the last six weeks of
the year.
The index shows that staffing employment remained virtually unchanged for
the first half of 2009. But then, after
bottoming out at 66 the week of Independence Day, it began to tick up, and
up and up, week after week, reaching 82
by mid-December.
Then, after the usual pause due
to Christmas and New Year’s Day,
growth resumed again in 2010, with
the index rising to 94 in November and
December.
After another holiday pause, growth
continued in the first half of 2011, too,
albeit more slowly. As of mid-July, the
index had reached a high of 88, three
points ( 3.6%) higher than in the same
week of 2010.
Average Daily Employment
Average daily employment of tempo-
rary and contract workers fell from
3. 12 million in 2007 to 2. 18 million
in 2009, a loss of nearly a million jobs,
or 30% of the industry’s work force
(see Figure 8),
28 according to the ASA
quarterly employment and sales survey.
(See the sidebar “Methodology of ASA
Economic Surveys” on page 46.)
Other Employment Measures
Average daily employment is really
a count of the number of individuals
working on assignments on a typical
business day. For most industries, the
daily average roughly equals annual
employment. Given the generally
short-term nature of temporary and
To Increase Spending, Fed Needs to Increase Money in Circulation The Feds should return total spending in the economy to its prerecession trend level by increasing the money in circulation. As money in circulation rises, so too will the value of spending. This would not spark in- flation, because with lots of spare capacity in the economy, any price increase encour- ages firms to bring new production online— and hire new workers. —Ryan Avent, economics correspon- dent of the Economist Continued from page 22 Staffing Success 25
Welcome Immigrant Entrepre-
neurs to Stimulate Job Creation
Do much more to welcome entrepreneurs
and other skilled individuals from abroad
who want to build companies in the U.S. Immigrants found companies at greater rates than
native-born Americans and are disproportionately
successful in starting successful high-tech firms.
—Carl J. Schramm, president and
chief executive officer of the Kauffman
Foundation
Overhaul Career and Technical
Education
Without high-quality retraining, workers
get stuck in dying industries, where their
skills, networks, and work habits erode. This
then shrinks the supply of skilled workers,
discouraging employers and leading many
big firms to look overseas. Community colleges and work force development programs
are currently “a mess,” and for-profit institutions offer training of “dubious quality.”
—Frederick Hess, resident scholar and
director of education policy studies at
the American Enterprise Institute
Let the Free Market Grow
The government should stop trying to
control the free market. There is nothing the
government can do to create jobs, which is
why it should “get out of the way and let the
free market grow.”
—Michael P. Fleischer, president of
Bogen Communications
