Monthly Employment Situation with an emphasis on staffing and temporary help services

U.S. Employment Situation (June 2009)
presented by Bruce Steinberg | posted July 2, 2009

www.brucesteinberg.net

Home of the first and only U.S. employment report podcasts

As The Tide Turns ...

... sounds like a good title for a soap opera that is set on a waterfront, but it also seems to apply to the employment situation. Just as the recession began the recede, some numbers got worse. The bad news was that job losses picked up some steam last month; it was down 467,000 jobs in June. Even taking into account the government sector's loss of about 46,000 temporary jobs associated with the 2010 census, June's loss was still larger than the previous month. However, historically June is often weak in terms of job growth. Since the onset of the recession, the employment economy has lost nearly 6.5 million jobs. However, although the unemployment rate continued to rise, the good news is that it was at a much slower rate.

'Reselling the sold' ...

This e-mail employment report last month generated a number of comments and we appreciate all the feedback, even though we may not get back to you for a few days. A number of you seemed to agree with me that things were looking up.

This is from Carol Barber, EVP with Bernard HODES Group, which provides integrated talent solutions: "We see our clients projecting hiring, albeit very selective, out as far as mid-2010. Our focus has shifted to helping them, as I call it, 'resell the sold.' Big internal initiatives aimed at keeping those retained in happy frames of mind."

Sounds like sound advice to us -- time to re-cultivate existing and past relationships as the logjam that has been our economy begins to break up and starts to flow again.

Twitter thee, Twitter dumb, Twitter smarter ...

I've started Twittering a little more than a month ago but with a bit of a different twist than many of the other twits on the social networking / micro-blogging site. I provide a brief (is there any other kind when you're limited to 140 characters?) comment on the latest economic indicators. If you visit our Economic Indicators page, there is a direct link to my Twitter page. I plan only to include employment and economic related items and not to tweet that I am going out to pick up a gallon a milk from the store or my dog just pooped. But I reserve the right to blog about something so off-topic and so ridiculous it may bring a smile to your face.

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More Fan Mail ...

“I worked with Bruce when he was with the American Staffing Association, Staffing Industry Analysts and as a colleague on the Business Research Advisory Council to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bruce has unique and powerful insights and perspectives on everything related to labor statistics and the staffing industry. His products are practical and they truly add value. Bruce is a knowledgeable, talented and entertaining communicator. I would welcome the opportunity to work with Bruce in the future.” -- Steven Drexel, President and CEO, CSG Holdings, Inc, & CORESTAFF Services (former)

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Where are the open jobs in your local market?

Our Employment Tracking Tool – is designed to assist you in identifying and evaluating new sectors and markets. It examines the overall employment trends by industry in the given market to help determine possibly under-serviced industries to target marketing efforts (as well as what industries to avoid). By doing this, it shows what industries are growing and therefore are in expansion mode making them eager for a wide variety of products and services and likely in need of additional staff.

Another tool is the Temporary Help Services Interactive Data Book. This tool will enable to benchmark your staffing operation at the local level to see exactly where you are positioned in the market and if your offices are performing up to local staffing sector trends.

Demonstrations of both strategic planning tools are available. View either demo and you get a free copy of "How Do You Measure Up?," an article I wrote earlier this year showing temporary help trends in eight different regions of the country.

There is a direct link to the free PDF download of the article on the last "slide" of each demo.

See further descriptions of these two strategic planning tools and links to the demos

June Employment Report

Quick Recap

The trend of growing job losses returned in June after declining losses for four consecutive months. There were 467,000 fewer jobs in June than in May, which was 322,000 lower than April, which was 519,000 lower than March. Since December 2007, the economy has lost 6,460,000 jobs, or 4.7 percent.

No surprise that the unemployment rate continued to rise, but big declines may be coming to an end soon; it was only off 0.1 percent to 9.5 percent in June. The unemployment rate was helped by the fact that the labor force shrank by 155,000 while those not in the labor force grew by 358,000.

Jobs Report

Job losses were spread equally between the two major sectors of the economy, despite their unequal size. The Goods-producing lost 223,000 jobs in May while the Service-providing sector, at about six times the size, was down 244,000. However, when taking into account the 52,000 drop in Government employment, private Service-providing sector jobs dropped by 192,000.

The Manufacturing sector was still on a forced diet and dropped 136,000 jobs. Durable Goods, with about 7.2 million jobs, was down 112,000 jobs; Nondurable Goods, with around 4.6 million jobs, got off easy with a loss of only 24,000 jobs.
The Construction sector continued to have trouble building anything in June and was down 79,000 jobs in all major sub sectors.

Looking for more? Check out our podcasts!

Podcasts of the current employment situation will be available by 4:00 p.m. ET today, July 2nd. The video podcast, which you can start and stop to study the tables and graphs as well as replay individual sections, also includes additional data and information. Watch the video version here or just listen to the audio version here (no special hardware or software required).

Jobs in Mining and Logging continued to dry up since it lost 8,000 jobs in June.

The Service-providing sector, which accounts for about 85 percent of all employment, was down 244,000 jobs in June, which was really not good news in light of only a 107,000 job loss in May.

The Retail Trade sector continued to move jobs off the shelves -- it lost 21,000 jobs in June.
The Wholesale Trade sector continued to ship out jobs to the tune of 15,900 last month.
Considering the trends in the Retail and Wholesale sectors, Transportation and Warehousing had less stuff to move and store so it eliminated 13,900 jobs with Truck Transportation hitting a major pothole causing 11,000 jobs to fall off the back of the trucking sector.
No surprise that the Financial Activities sector still had no interest in bringing in jobs since it subtracted 27,000 in June; in May, it eliminated 30,000 jobs from its employment accounts.
The jobs losses are finally catching up to Professional and Business Services, which is a large sector employing 16.6 million, and was down 118,000 jobs in June. Computer Systems Design and Related Services does not seem to be able to rid itself of a virus called "JobLoss.bad" since it lost 2,700 jobs in June following a 6,300 loss in May.

Apparently it pays to be smart and healthy in today's economy as Education and Health Services continued to buck the overall trend. Educational Services was smart enough to add 14,900 jobs. Health Care and Social Assistance injected itself with 18,600 new jobs in all major sectors except the Social Assistance part that lost 2,200 jobs. Perhaps this economy is sending more people to Hospitals that added 3,700 while more people also stayed at home since Home Health Care Services added 1,700 jobs.

New jobs were not welcome in the Leisure and Hospitality sector; it lost 18,000 jobs in June.
The Government shrank last month, but because the USPS cancelled 2,400 jobs while the rest of the Federal government eliminated 46,300 jobs because of dismissing workers hired temporarily by the government preparing for the 2010 Census. The trend in State government was negative with the loss of 4,000 jobs but Local governments added 1,000 jobs, all of the positive growth in local government employment can be traced back to education.

Temporary Help Services Roundup

Those looking to Temporary Help Services as a leading indicator of better times ahead were undoubtedly disappointed. Jobs in Temporary Help Services took a dive for the first month of summer, which may prove to be a long and hot one for this sector. It was down 37,600 jobs to 1,735,800, or down 2.1 percent in June. Year-to-year loss was nearly 27.2 percent.

(if chart below is unclear, click on it to open in a browser window)

And Temporary Help Services continued to lose market share with only 1.32 percent (which is the percentage of all jobs) in June.

Household Survey

The unemployment rate continued to rise -- albeit at a much slower rate -- to 9.5 percent as the number of unemployed persons rose by 218,000 to about 14.7 million out of a total labor force of almost 155 million.

The employment-to-population ratio dropped 0.2 percentage points to 59.5 percent while the labor force participation rate declined by the same amount to 65.7 percent.

NEXT EMPLOYMENT REPORT -- FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2009

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