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U.S. Employment Situation (April 2013)
published by Bruce Steinberg | May 3, 2013

named as a Top 100 Influencer in HR-Recruiting

 

 

www.brucesteinberg.net

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

 

 

A quick state-by-state analysis of Temporary Help Services job growth ...
 

As a means of demonstrating to you some of the strategic planning tools we provide to clients, we produced an interesting map for this month's employment report. It shows how temporary help service jobs have grown, or declined, in the first three quarters of 2012 compared to the same time period in 2011.

 

[Note: clicking on the chart will open it in a new browser window.]

 

The state with the greatest growth rate was North Dakota, which was up 21.8 percent followed by Arizona with a growth rate of 16.5 percent. At the bottom of the list was Delaware with a decline of 5.3 percent in the first three quarters of 2012 from the first three quarters in 2011.

 

Nationally, temporary help service jobs grew 7.2 percent in this time period (the maroon color).

 

As you can see, an almost contiguous group of states east of the Mississippi River registered growth rates well above the national rate. Those contiguous states are: Kentucky (up 14.9 percent), Illinois (up 13.7%), Tennessee (up 13.4 percent), and Mississippi (up 12.0 percent); and Nebraska, which is separated from that group, was up 14.1 percent. And a swath of five states from California (up 9.7 percent) to Kansas (up 11.5 percent) experienced growth rates above the national average.

 

We said that this was just a brief overview of our Temporary Help Services Interactive Data Book at the state level (other versions provide granularity down to the county level). A further description of this tool, along with a special discount, is under the Strategic Planning Tools heading in the box below, to the left.

 

Follow-up from last month ...

 

Last month in this space we summarized a recent NPR feature focusing on the federal disability program and how it has become, for some, sort of "permanent unemployment insurance." Last month the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published an article on unemployment insurance program fraud, saying "In 2011, this program cost $108 billion, of which nearly $3.3 billion was spent on overpayments due to fraud." The authors "document a few facts regarding concealed earnings fraud among various income groups. These facts may help focus efforts to deter fraud and to recover overpayments." You can read the entire article here.

 

 

Strategic Planning Tools ...

Our Temporary Help Services Interactive Data Book tool will enable to view the local (down to the county level) temporary help services trends as well as benchmark your local staffing operation  to discover exactly where you are positioned in the market and if your offices are performing up to the local market. Mention Code Q32012 and receive a 50 percent discount off our national version (state level data) of this invaluable strategic planning tool.

Then use our Employment Tracking Tool that 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.

Demonstrations of both strategic planning tools are available.

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


2020 is now only seven years away ... this free report will help you plan to get there

 

Our special supplemental standalone report on the future nature of jobs to the year 2020, which includes a focus on what the future holds for staffing and employment services, is still available. And because we know our audience tend to the JUNE 7, the eight-page report is packed with charts and tables of data. The report also includes lists of the fastest growing industries/sectors as well as types of jobs in order for staffing executives to help in their strategic planning for the immediate future. If you would like a copy free of charge, just shoot us an email and we'll send the link.


 

Looking for more? Check out our podcasts!

Podcasts of the current employment situation will be available by 4:00 p.m. ET Friday, May 3rd. The video podcast, which you can start and stop to study the tables and graphs as well as replay individual sections, includes additional data and information.  Watch the video version here or just listen to the audio version here (no special hardware or software required), which also can be downloaded to an iPod.


The "ultimate consultant's consultant."

"Bruce is an invaluable resource to me in working through the strategic planning process with my clients in the staffing industry. Bruce consults with me on each engagement and customizes his deliverables accordingly, exceeding my expectations each time. He expediently gathers and compiles the data I need and delivers it in user-friendly reports which make the analysis portion of my job easy. Because with Bruce's assistance I can make strategy recommendations with confidence and accuracy, my clients benefit greatly in turn. He is the ultimate "consultant's consultant." -- Amy Bingham, Bingham Consulting Professionals View more Testimonials


An interview worth reading (it's with me!) ...

 

Lately we've been receiving an abnormal amount of requests for blog entries. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of spare time to exert the necessary effort to develop gratis quality material. However, when the request is simply more than poorly veiled attempt of wanting free editorial material for a website / blog, and shows some real effort put into the request, we'll consider it.

 

One such request recently came from Purzue, a job market portal that, in addition to providing job postings for employers, also enables job seekers to create digital resumes to maximize their exposure to potential employers. They took the time to understand what we are about, how our experience and answers may help their stakeholders and posed some perceptive and provocative questions that made us think. In turn, we provided some thoughtful and insightful answers … the Q&A session can be found here.  

 

April 2013 Employment Report

 

Quick recap

 

The unemployment rate, which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics again labeled as "little changed," ticked down to 7.5 percent in April from 7.6 percent in March.   April's unemployment rate is the lowest it's been since the end of 2008; a year ago, it was 8.1 percent. Although there has been recent criticism that the recent declining unemployment is due to the wrong reasons -- mainly declines in the size of the labor force and more people leaving the workforce -- this month the components that are used to calculate the unemployment rate all moved in a more positive direction. More details about the unemployment rate and its composite components in the "Household Survey" section at the bottom of this column.

Although the total number of jobs was up by 165,000 in April and more than most estimates, we think the bigger news in this month's employment data is the revision to March's number. March's job data were revised upward to 138,000, after being initially reported as only up 88,000. And February's number, which was initially reported as 236,000 growth, is now being pegged at an increase of 332,000. We've said it before and it bears repeating, labor market observers should keep in mind that these data are subject to revision and one month's set of numbers do not make a trend.

Getting back to the current employment report, when factoring out the decline in government jobs, total private-sector job growth was 176,000 in April with March and February revised to growth of 154,000 up 319,000, respectively.

Jobs Report

 

The number of jobs in the private Goods-producing sector declined by 9,000 in April, which is in stark contrast to March's increase of 15,000 and February's growth of 75,000. Regardless of the actual numbers, this development is a bit disturbing for the following reasons:

  • The pace didn't just slow in the Construction sector, but reversed direction with a decline of 6,000 jobs; only two months ago, in February, this sector added 48,000 jobs. In retrospect -- and taking into account April's shrinkage -- it looks as if builders were being a bit too optimistic at that time.

  • Manufacturers were flat in terms of jobs neither adding nor subtracting jobs in April. Fabricated metal products and Machinery manufacturers were the big gainers (up 2,500 and 3,600, respectively) in Durable goods while Apparel and Printing and related support activities (down 2,900 and 3,100, respectively) were the big losers among Nondurable goods manufacturers.
  • Mining and logging trimmed back 3,000 jobs in April.

Therefore, it was up to the private Service-providing sector to bring new jobs to the party, and it appeared to be up to the task. It grew by 185,000 jobs in April, which was better than the 139,000 it added in March, but not up to the level of adding 244,000 in February.

  • The Retail trade sector, which had processed a few returns by declining by 3,900 in March, added 29,300 in April. And should you think that was because of a large increase at Building material and garden supply stores in April, you would only be partially correct. They only added 2,800 jobs; the big action was at General merchandise stores that grew by 14,800 jobs in April.
  • Jobs in Wholesale trade were up by 4,100 in April after growing by 2,900 in March (revised).
  • But the Transportation and warehousing sector is now heading in the right direction now with the addition of 4,200 jobs in April after shedding 6,700 in March.
  • Financial activities added 9,000 in April, which was better than the growth of only 5,000 in March (revised). But the growth was not in the Real estate and rental and leasing sub-sector, which was down by 1,600, but in the Finance and insurance portion that added 9,900 jobs.
  • The Professional and business services sector 73,000 jobs in April and March's revised increase of 64,000 was 13,000 better than initially reported last month.  Computer systems design and related services added 3,300 positions in April and Management and technical consulting services jobs, which is about 30 percent smaller in terms of the number of jobs, added 5,700 jobs.
  • The Education and health services sector added a total of 28,000 jobs in April with the sector's Health care and social assistance portion growing by 26,100 jobs; Home health care services grew by 6,100 jobs in April, which was the same increase it experienced in March.
  • The party picked up a little in the Leisure and hospitality sector that grew by 43,000 in April after adding 38,000 in March.
  • Government jobs continued to decline with a total decrease of 11,000 total in April after a decline of 16,000 in March. In April, the Federal government contracted by 8,000, State government contracted by 1,000, and Local government was down by 2,000.

Temporary Help Services Roundup

 

Temporary help services picked up speed in April with a gain of 30,800 jobs, which was the largest monthly increase in more than a year. This brings the total number of Temporary help services jobs in April to 2,664,600, which was sequential growth of 1.2 percent and a year-on-year gain of 7.4 percent.

 

In April, Temporary help service's market share, that is its portion of all jobs, was 1.97 percent, which was more than just an incremental improvement from March's 1.95 percent. The highest level of this metric was in April 2000 when it was 2.03 percent; considering how this sector has broadened and added depth to its service offerings in the past decade, it's not inconceivable that level will be breached in the near future.

(if the chart is unclear, click on them to open in a browser window)

Click on graph to open in a new browser window.

And the Temporary help services sector is likely to reach a new historic in May since it is only off about 11,000 jobs from its historic peak.

Household Survey

The April 7.5 percent unemployment rate was 0.1 percentage point lower than March's 7.6 percent. This was a result of a labor force -- although growing by 210,000 -- 293,000 more persons were employed at the same time and 83,000 fewer people were unemployed.  The number of persons not in the labor force declined by 31,000.

 

In other words, although the size of the labor force expanded, the number of unemployed persons decreased at the same time a relatively larger number people found jobs. Therefore, the unemployment rate declined.

The employment-to-population ratio (58.6) increased by 0.1 as the labor force participation rate (63.3) was unchanged. A year earlier, the labor force participation rate was 63.6 percent. And there were 835,000 discouraged workers last month compared to 968,000 in April 2012.


NEXT EMPLOYMENT REPORT -- FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 2013

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