The year-to-year gap narrows, new starts down from the previous week
Staffing employment increased during the week of Aug. 12-18, with the ASA Staffing Index edging up by 0.4% to return a rounded value of 90.
The index declined as usual over the July Fourth holiday and has seen a slower recovery when compared with previous years. Staffing jobs were down 11.1% compared with the same week last year, narrowing the gap by around one percentage point from the previous week.
Staffing companies listed no primary factor that prevented further growth.
New starts, however, saw a decrease in the 33rd week of the year, down by 7.2% from the prior week. More than three in 10 staffing companies (35%) reported gains in new assignments week-to-week—below the average of 42% per week so far this year.
The ASA Staffing Index’s four-week moving average increased from the prior week to hold at a rounded value of 89, and temporary and contract staffing employment for the four weeks ending Aug. 18 was 12.2% lower than the same period in 2023.
“The index has finally recovered from its seasonal, midyear dip, and has returned to a steady-state value of 90 for 2024. This year, it took seven weeks for the index to recover from the July Fourth dip, compared with just three weeks in the previous two years. Cooling labor market activity and subdued labor churn likely extended this year’s recovery time for the index, but these conditions are anomalies that will begin to ease once interest rates are lowered next month as expected,” said Noah Yosif, chief economist at ASA.
This week will be used in the August monthly employment situation report scheduled to be issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Sept. 6.
The ASA Staffing Index is reported nine days after each workweek, making it a near real-time measure of staffing employment trends. ASA Staffing Starts are the number of temporary and contract employees placed in new assignments during the reporting week. ASA research shows that staffing employment has historically been a coincident economic indicator.
