June 2017 Job Growth Continues to Strengthen
June 2017 job growth continues to strengthen.
The American Staffing Association (ASA) tracks changes in temporary and contract employment. They use a model developed by Standard and Poor’s DRI/McGraw Hill in 1992 to track, compare, and understand trends in the staffing industry. The ASA works with a market research firm to report the changes to the staffing industry in almost real-time. The survey index they created uses a baseline of 100 that was set in June 2006. Using this baseline, they report that the staffing index for the month of June 2017 increased to 96.30. This is the highest value for the same week since 2007.
Staffing employment was 2.20 percent higher than the same week last year, according to the ASA Staffing Index, up 4.7 percent from June of 2016, the best pace job growth has had in two years.
In addition, temporary and contract staffing employment was 0.21% higher than the prior week, growing 0.4 percent from May to June, and 4.7 percent higher than in June of 2016, according to seasonally adjusted data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Nonseasonally adjusted BLS data, which estimates the actual number of jobs in the economy, indicated that temporary employment increased 1.3 percent from May to June 2017.
According to the seasonally adjusted data, U.S. nonfarm payroll employment increased by 223,000 jobs in June and, according to the incorporation of revisions for April and May, job gains averaged 194,000 per month over the past three months, essentially equal to the average of 193,000 for the prior 12 months.
BLS also released preliminary May 2017 employment data for search and placement services, which increased 0.3 percent from April. Search and placement jobs totaled 294,200 in May 2017, which is 0.4 percent lower than in the same month in 2016.
The ASA found that staffing employment was 2.20 percent higher than the same week last year, while the BLS reported that in the same month last year, there were 4.7 percent more staffing employees.
Over the past month, the ASA Staffing Index progressed to an average of 95.43, the strongest reading of the four-week moving average so far this year. Year-to-year, the four-week average grew 1.81 percent.
The ASA Staffing Index is reported nine days after each workweek, making it a near real-time measure of staffing employment trends. ASA research shows that staffing employment is a coincident economic indicator.
As of July 17, 2017, the ASA staffing index is at 95, which is an increase of 1.88% above the previous year.
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For more information about the ASA, or to view this data, visit americanstaffing.net/bls-data.