Staffing Jobs Declined Sharply in December

From the American Staffing Association website:

Data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that temporary help jobs dropped significantly in December.
BLS nonseasonally adjusted data—which estimate actual employment—show temporary help employment declined 6.2% from November and was 19.9% lower than in December of last year. Seasonally adjusted data similarly show that temporary help employment fell 3.7% from November and declined 19% from one year prior.

"Temporary employment is unlikely to trough until December 2009," Wall Street analyst Jeffrey M. Silber of BMO Capital Markets Corp. said in a report issued to staffing stock investors last week. However, he suggested that the staffing industry may be about to stabilize. Silber projected little change in the actual number of temporary help employees from December 2008 through December 2009.

"The year-over-year declines in temporary staffing would begin to get 'less worse' in February 2009," he wrote. There will still be slight declines in staffing jobs through the end of the year, he forecasts, but the changes will soon approach single-digit percentages.
BLS also reported Friday that seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs declined by 524,000. This brings job losses in 2008 to 2.6 million, of which 1.9 million occurred in the past four months.

The unemployment rate increased to 7.2% in December from 6.7% in November.

Even though these number appear grim, the economy will turn around, and the staffing industry will be the leading indicator for the economy turning.