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.

"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

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.  

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.

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: