CHICAGO, August 5, 2009 — As the U.S. economy shows early signs of stabilization and employers grow more willing to have conversations about their hiring needs, staffing firms are expected to see an uptick in demand in key functional areas in the third quarter. CareerBuilder’s quarterly Staffing Supply and Demand Outlook, which tracks current and projected use of staffing firms by employers and job candidates, is pointing to more activity in healthcare, technical and contract hiring for staffing firms. The study included over 5,200 hiring managers and over 9,000 workers.
“As the U.S. works toward a healthier financial picture, the outlook for the staffing industry is holding steady overall with encouraging movement in some areas,” said Todd McCormick, president of the Recruiter Business Unit and Canadian operations at CareerBuilder. “While remaining cautious in their hiring pace, employers are more optimistic about their use of staffing firms in the fall as they seek out talent to fill interim and long-term positions.”
Permanent and Temporary Hiring
Thirteen percent of hiring managers say they expect to use a staffing firm over the next three months, on par with findings from the second quarter. Of those, nearly one-in-ten expect to utilize a staffing firm to help in their search for permanent full-time employees in the upcoming quarter, reflective of the second quarter.
Six percent of hiring managers expect to utilize a staffing firm to help fill temporary or contract positions in the upcoming quarter, up slightly from 5 percent in the second quarter. Looking at large organizations (500+ employees) specifically, nearly 9 percent of hiring managers, expect to hire temporary or contract employees through a staffing firm in the thrid quarter, compared to just over 7 percent a quarter ago.
Hiring By Industry
Temporary hiring in health care is expected to experience the largest gain with a 13 percent increase from last quarter in the number of employers expecting to utilize staffing firms to support their recruitment needs. Temporary professional positions are forecasted to increase by 11 percent and technology-related positions are expected to experience a growth of 9 percent.
Hiring managers expect utilization of staffing firms for permanent, full-time positions to be higher in health care and industrial full-time positions over the 2nd quarter. Office/clerical, technology and professional placements are all forecast to remain unchanged, while no sectors plan to decrease their use of staffing firms.
Utilization by Job Seekers
As job seekers look to cover every option for the job search process, nearly one-in-four say they plan to use a staffing or recruiting firm as part of their search this quarter, up from 22 percent in the last quarter. Of those not currently using a staffing firm, more than half indicate they would if they were still searching three months from now.
Job candidates in the technical, IT and scientific sector continue to be most open to utilizing a staffing firm in their job search, with 34 percent indicating they would consider staffing as part of their search strategy. On the other hand, industrial employees seem most hesitant regarding the use of a staffing firm, with four-in-five job saying they are not willing to consider working with a staffing firm as part of their search.
Time Spent In Job Search Varies By Industry
Active job seekers report having spent more than four months in their current job search on average and the median job seeker started to search roughly 90 days (just over three months) ago, according to the Harris Interactive® survey participants. Of those included in the study, nurses and .Net developers reported the shortest job searches, at between 50 and 70 days (roughly two months) looking, or half as long as the typical job seeker. Data entry operator and call center employees had the longest job searches with 138 and 150 days.
No job titles from the industrial or office/clerical sectors made the list of shortest job searches with the median days in the job search for those sectors being 121 and 105 days, respectively, more than 20 percent longer than any other sector.
This executive summary provides an overview of the staffing outlook for the third quarter of 2009. Additional information is available through your CareerBuilder account representative, or by request at RBUStaffing@CareerBuilder.com. You can also download the full outlook here.
Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive® on behalf of CareerBuilder among 5,210 hiring managers and human resource professionals (employed full-time; not self-employed; with at least significant involvement in hiring decisions); and 9,667 U.S. employees (actively or passively looking for a job, not self-employed or retired) ages 18 and over. The analysis utilizes two waves of the survey, fielded between May 20 and June 7, 2009 (2,667 employers and 4,871 job seekers), and between February 20 and March 11 2009 (2,543 employers and 4,796 job seekers).
With a pure probability sample of 2,543 and 4,796 (the lower of each of the waves), one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 1.9 percentage points and +/- 1.4 percentage points, respectively. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.
CareerBuilder partnered with the Inavero Institute for Service Research to provide analysis and help guide the study design and implementation.
About CareerBuilder
CareerBuilder is the global leader in human capital solutions, helping companies target and attract their most important asset – their people. Its online career site, CareerBuilder.com, is the largest in the U.S. with more than 23 million unique visitors, 1 million jobs and 31 million resumes. CareerBuilder works with the world’s top employers, providing resources for everything from employment branding and data analysis to talent acquisition. More than 9,000 Web sites, including 140 newspapers and broadband portals such as MSN and AOL, feature CareerBuilder’s proprietary job search technology on their career sites. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company, The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. For more information, visit www.careerbuilder.com
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