At the Helm

Despite Improving Economic Climate, Temporary Labor Bill Rates Unchanged

By
Gary Pollard

Several recent government reports show that the U.S. economy ended 2011 on a modest note of encouragement. In its release on the December employment situation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the rate of unemployment declining from 9.1% in August to 8.5% in December.ⁱ While the overall improvement is small, the trend was consistent over four months. This raises hope that U.S. economic activity is finally creating new jobs at a rate that will slowly reduce persistent high unemployment.

The Department of Commerce report on the Gross Domestic Product in the fourth quarter of 2011 is similarly a source of cautious optimism.ⁱⁱ While the full year level of economic growth was a weak 1.7%, the picture brightened throughout the 2011:

Signals of economic improvement may be consistent, but they have yet to gather the strength and momentum to impact overall temporary labor bill rates. The Master IQNdex (download now!) tells the story: aggregate temp labor prices were steady in the second half of 2011. The net change over this period was less than half a percent.

If economic expansion continues in 2012 and the ranks of the unemployed shrinks, there will likely be upward pressure on temporary labor bill rates as the pool of readily available workers grows smaller. The modest improvements in growth and unemployment so far, however, have yet to impact rates beyond a few high skill roles in technology and finance.

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i. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012)
ii. (U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis)

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2012, January 6). Bureau of Labor Statistics News Releases. Retrieved January 29, 2012, from U.S. Department of Labor – Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2012, January 27). Economics & Statistics Administration – Newsroom. Retrieved January 29, 2012, from U.S. Department of Commerce: http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/ei/documents/2012/January/grossdomesticproductfourthquarterandannual2011.pdf

US IQNdex Highlights: November 2011

By
Gary Pollard

IQNavigator manages over ten million hours of temporary labor every month in the United States. This provides a broad-based, timely view of trends in temporary labor bill rates. Each month these trends are summarized in the IQNdex.

We release an in-depth report on IQNdex findings every quarter over at IQNtelligence.com; now, to add to that, we plan to release a monthly data sheet that will give insight into each month’s change. You can download a copy of December’s US IQNdex Data Sheet here (it covers November’s trends).

Here’s a sneak peek of the highlights:

• Year-over-year comparisons show rates trending higher in all regions and all job sectors in 2011 versus 2010. The Professional-Managerial job sector is up 10 percent, largely due to rate increases for accounting and finance assignments. Regionally, the Northeast and South are up over 7 points
• In the four U.S. geographic regions, only the South showed a significant uplift in rates. This continues a year-long trend; the South index value has risen seven points since the start of the year. The November increase in the South was led by jobs in finance.
• Technical-IT job sector rates were flat in November. The rate increase shown in October was not sustained. IT roles focused on design and planning, such as Software Architect, were the exception and showed modest rate increases.

For the full story download the data sheet and subscribe to receive monthly US IQNdex updates.

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