The unemployment rate doesn’t count people who don’t have a job but have given up looking.
However, even though temporary agency experts say they’re seeing increases in employment through their services, the total number of people working through employment services in Ohio was down in October, according to early estimates.
Employment services, which include temporary help agencies, other employment services and agency staff, had employment of 119,300 in October compared to 125,600 the same month a year ago, a 5 percent decrease, according to the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Still, if people are looking for a job right now, temporary agencies are a good bet.
“I believe companies are truly hesitant to bring on direct employment, but the needs are still there,” said Leigh Ann Pagnard, president of Cincinnati-based Belcan Staffing Solutions. “That’s something it’s just easier for the companies to do and it makes sense when you’re not sure how long the job will last.”
Belcan, which has offices in Fairfield and an office newly opened last month in Middletown, already passed this year the number of people they hired for temporary work last year, Pagnard said.
Belcan’s 20 commercial staffing locations in the U.S. have employed 14,500 people so far this year, compared to approximately 12,000 people in all of 2010, Pagnard said.
American Staffing Association’s Employment and Sales Survey released Nov. 21 reported on average 2.82 million people in the U.S. worked a day in temporary jobs in the third quarter. That’s an increase of 2.4 percent from the second quarter and an increase of 5.2 percent from the third quarter of 2010, according to the survey.
Those numbers match the Cincinnati region’s forecast for next year that employment will increase 1.4 percent and unemployment will decrease by 0.4 percent from this year, according to the 2012 Regional Economic Outlook for Cincinnati USA Partnership.
Currently, unemployment in the Cincinnati metropolitan region is 8.6 percent, according to the most recent numbers released by Ohio Department of Job and Family Services for October. Butler County’s unemployment rate for October was 8.7 percent, according to Ohio Job and Family Services.
Staffing agency employment is an indicator of the health of the overall economy because job levels at staffing agencies move the same way the economy is moving, said Steve Berchem, vice president of American Staffing Association, an industry association.
Temporary workers are the first jobs employers cut when business is slow and the first workers employers hire back, he said.
Temporary and contract employment is also a leading indicator for total employment. Berchem said the same trends temporary staffing see show up about six months later in overall employment.
Temporary jobs are projected to continue to grow, but the pace is slowing down, Pagnard and Berchem said.
Jerry Stewart of Colerain Twp. said he was hoping for a steady job while filling out paperwork at Belcan’s Fairfield office Wednesday. He was referred by a friend for a warehouse job. He currently works in landscaping, which is seasonal.
“If I can get something a little more stable, I prefer that,” Stewart said.
Staffing started to see overall nonfarm employment growth pick up in early 2010 and grow strong last year and the early part of this year, Berchem said. The pace of growth slowed this summer, partly because of the Japanese earthquake and uncertainty over the stock market and U.S. debt crisis, he said.
“People running businesses today are just reluctant to add staff especially in this economic climate because they don’t want to bear that heartburn again,” he said.
Hamilton Fixture uses temporary workers to avoid layoffs, said Bob Kehm, human resources director.
Hamilton Fixture, 3550 Symmes Road, makes custom retail fixtures. Its busiest time of year is during the summer, and at a peak the company hires about 30 temporary workers from Belcan and other temporary job agencies, Kehm said. Direct employment at Hamilton Fixture’s Ohio location is about 100, he said.
“We can flex pretty quickly up and down depending on our workload,” Kehm said.
The most in demand temporary jobs right now are distribution related, such as pickers, packers and forklift drivers, Pagnard said.
Since the recession, employers aren’t just looking for temporary manufacturing and clerical help either.
The talk of a skills mismatch — that there are job openings but they require higher skill sets than the unemployed have — applies to temporary workers too. Employers using staffing agencies now are asking for workers to have more skills and to fill positions in fields including science, research, law, technology and accounting, Berchem said.
The biggest challenge for temp agencies has become finding skilled workers, he said.
Pagnard said, “I think we all got a little bit spoiled when the economy was down because there were great candidates that weren’t available before.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2551 or clevingston@coxohio.com.
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