$$ Staffing Index Holds Level

Expected result…..

During the week of Sept. 6–12, 2010, temporary and contract employment rose 0.64%, maintaining the index at a value of 96.

At a current index value of 96, U.S. staffing employment is 39% higher than the level reported for the first week of the current year and is 25% higher than the same weekly period in 2009.

Monthly Report: September 2010

Staffing employment in September is 25% higher than in the same month last year, according to the ASA Staffing Index. The index for September is 96, up one point from 95 for August, suggesting that staffing employment has increased about 1% over the past month.

Going back the last 4 years we find this time of year the survey seems to pause and become choppy as the holidays approach. There is no reason to expect anything different this year. Rather than taking a “what we want to see” approach, because of the expected choppyness (is that a word?), we need to switch to a “what we do not want to see” one. While we expect week to week variations that are larger than what we have seen this year, we do not want to see a sustained downtrend. While we expect the index to plummet at the end of the year, we do not want it to stay down as 2011 begins.

Barring the sustained downtrend, we can say the index is behaving as it historically has and thus NFP (non far payrolls) will continue to improve as the lag time (~3 months), between the index and NFP results tells us we can expect continued improvement through the fall and into early winter.