The national unemployment rate is 4.6%, so there are jobs out there. They may not be the job you want, and they may not pay enough to keep you out of your parent’s house, but you can at least get out of the house while working and that should be better than not working. As for the market, I am going to sell everything!
Many employers hire for a probationary period. They don’t need temp agencies to implement a “test run” on hires. I do, however, think temp agencies can be useful for workers who are in the job market and looking for experience, income, and opportunities and haven’t been able to score a position yet. But, as mentioned, this is nothing new and has been a useful tool in a job seeker’s quiver for decades.
There are some downsides to employers using temp agencies to hire. A few: an increased cost due to the temp agency’s fee (if they have a capable, staffed HR department, there is often little need to outsource that function) and it isn’t often the way to source the best candidate for the job as the best candidates are often already employed elsewhere.
Yes, the unemployment rate is down and IME at least, rather strong right now compared to the last several years. I see nothing that says it’s going to take off and see some evidence to the contrary.
ETA:
Just because it is a horrendous pet peeve of mine:
No. Neither of them are “agency’s.” They are agencies. Unless you’re talking about something belonging to one of them…
doschicos before I started using it I would have a agreed with you. we tell the agency what we need. they pre screen 4 or 5 candidates for an interview. we than choose, sometimes we need a couple of extra candidates. if they are taken on board by my company and they do not work during the probation …one phone call to the agency and they never come back(used twice) , if you have a really bad person (they will come out and terminate on demand…never had to do that) we as a company have very little turnover…like if people make it past the first trial period they stay 15.20 or 30 years or even longer… I try and hit a home run every time and I can not review 500 ,600 or 700 resumes for a job. the agencies do work hard to get top notch employees, because if they do not place people they do not get paid (staffing company and recruiter) they also know there are tons of agencies and if they do not deliver the agency gets dumped for a new one.
p.s. in the old days (like 5 years ago) I would poach people for some positions. (never ever from a small company or family business) but I needed a customer service person and poached a smiling ,happy hard working woman from a fast food joint near my office. while everyone else behind the counter was doing everything but working she was really hustling with a smile and great attitude (she was just awesome not preforming for a future employer) I than sent a woman from my office to get herself lunch and reach out to fast food employee (a guy doing it might seem creepy) she had the attitude and desire to learn…but she got pregnant and moved out of state.so when it came time to replace her I asked my girl friend how the big company she worked for gets people with all kinds of skill sets for many different jobs she told me.about the temp to hire…I laughed and said I do not need a temp agency…she said give it a try , my boss gave me thumbs up and it has been awesome.
Fewer applicants for more jobs… who gets to be picky? It is the sellers’ market out there. Do you want to be stuck with the underqualified temp when the competitor hires that stellar PhD MBA? Hmmm…
Carl Icahn is not a friend to labor, consumers, or anyone but himself. While he may not get his sticky hands on another airline, it is eye opening to see the type of person who will be in a top position. In case you don’t know what he did, here’s a recap:
If this is the business model to strive for now, very few people win in this scenario. Just the people raiding the companies, not the investors or employees. We are wondering if the new chairman of the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) might be Frank Lorenzo (the destroyer of Eastern Airlines). Seems to fit the trend.
I can’t speak for everyone, but right now airline employees probably aren’t losing sleep over TSA harassment. They’re losing sleep over the current administrations’s giveaway of permits to an international carrier (NAI), which could certainly threaten US passenger carriers by allowing cheap, low paid labor to fly routes they never could before. And the cargo carriers are losing sleep over the possibility of not upholding the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership), which would be absolutely devastating for business.
It’s all fine and good when someone is BSing and running their mouth, a different story when actual actions are taken. Action and reaction, unintended consequences, who is going to be affected by the fallout?
The current unemployment is a statistical number, not a real world on-the-ground number. It is only low because of the practice of not counting people who have given up looking for a job. Therefore, it is numerically possible to have high real unemployment and yet report a low unemployment rate because the unemployment rate only counts people looking for work.
Note that the unemployment rate has supposedly gone “down” as the labor participation rate has also gone down. We currently have the lowest labor participation rate in the last 40 years - that is the truest indicator that there are not viable jobs out there because people have given up looking for them. A healthy job market is indicated by a high labor participation rate, not a low one.
The word “jobs” is also misleading here, as all jobs are not the same. The only jobs that have grown in real terms are part-time jobs, as employers hold down costs associated with the ACA.
And another interesting stat is over 80%+ of real job growth for higher skilled jobs has gone to foreign workers, not native-born citizens, so they do not count as part of the stats.
Please, please, please let it be defunding of the OFCCP. It’s the origin of more bureaucratic HR stupidity around hiring than you can imagine. They’ve already had budget cuts for the last 2-3 years and it would be stellar if they’d just die altogether in their current form. I’d be fine with the EEOC going away as well but recognize that baby steps are necessary.
Interesting discussion on the LFPR cut. Fascinating visualization at the following link:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate
It looks like it’s begun trending slowly upward over the last 12-16 months but still about 3 points off where it was in 2008. That said, given 8 years have passed and numerous baby boomers have hit retirement age, someone with more time than me will need to figure out how much of the 3 point discrepancy is due to discouraged workers or natural due to the structural changes caused by people aging out of the workforce.
I don’t know enough to agree or disagree with this. Do you have a citation for this? I’d be interested in knowing if it’s H1Bs, GC holders, or something else entirely. Likewise, it’s unclear to me what definition of higher skilled jobs would make this true. Physicians are almost entirely domestically educated due to residency rules. I have no idea about nurses but I could see them over-represented with foreign workers. Engineering is remarkable right now as there are a ton of foreign workers as well as an abundance of domestic kids in school right now.
It’s one thing to assert companies are gearing up for hiring and quite another to predict with certainty just how this will affect those in the middle, neither working the line, nor executives. It may take some time to see this trickle out.
Promises are not outcomes.
And yes, temp to hire may be new to OP, but it has existed for ages. D2 took advantage of it. But you still have to get picked up, offered that position.
Busdriver, depending on his field, he can try it. It’s a legit avenue.
I agree that one has to get into the weeds to understand some of this stuff.
But, I will point out a few things: physicians and healthcare industry are excluded from such higher skilled jobs reports because of the licensing barriers at the federal and state level. That is essentially a protected domestic market. That is the reason there is a shortage of doctors that will continue for a couple decades. We could import doctors overnight to fill this shortage, but this would not pass muster with licensing boards. More importantly, patients would not trust their training and consumer confidence would be lower for the industry overall. (Note - the technical side of healthcare industry is included in these reports, such as maintenance of high-tech machines and software systems that run hospitals etc.)
Also, high skills jobs (software and other technology related jobs) are exactly the jobs that are 40-hour+ week jobs impacted most by ACA. Thus, whatever can be done to mitigate that mandated cost is being done and this where one is seeing the replacement of foreign workers for native workers because foreign workers do not qualify for the ACA or many payroll taxes for that matter. Native-born are still hired in these industries, but in real terms the hiring of native-born has stagnated.
Note that stagnation does not mean not hiring, but means hiring is not increasing in relation to the increase in jobs. In fact, the percentage of native-born hired is getting smaller, as the jobs increase. Do not confuse this less hiring, as one can have an increase hiring of native-born, but that real number could be lower than it could be because of an even larger increase in foreign workers.
The hardest part of getting these numbers is many numbers are subsets of other numbers. However, it can be implied rather clearly by looking at the labor market. For example, the increase in part-time jobs tracks perfectly with the ACA implementation (a known effect that was bound to happen). There is no record of such a massive part-time changeover in the labor market prior to the ACA.
In conjunction, there was no increase in the skills jobs market only a replacement of people who got those jobs - again, this tracks with the ACA and companies reducing mandated labor costs.
All this though is out the window 1/21/2017, as new rules, lower taxes, lower mandated costs, and less regulation will make it more advantageous to hire native-born workers, which is culturally more stable for a company to do. This is what companies are planning for right now and that is a good thing.
^^ My physician friends tell me there have been substantial increases in the number of foreign born, foreign educated physicians they work with at hospitals in the past few years.
back to my original concept, I gave a tip that I thought would be helpful to many people or perhaps to mention to family or friends. If you think it is a bad idea or silly by all means do not try it. those who do try it… many will find a position they would have never found and essentially use a backdoor to bypass the difficult and tiring and often fruitless sending of resumes. is temp to hire or direct hire (another option) from a staffing agency perfect 100% of the time for employers or employees? no…but how is the world of dating or looking for house or apartment? just trying to help some people improve their odds. for everyone else gee wiz holy moly.
My daughters non profit hires this way. It was new to me. She did not know this either. She did get an interview in a different manner with them but learned this was their practice.
What was great is that she was hired as a contractor for a three month period. After that both parties could negotiate an offer if the fit was good.
She was able to get a good look at the informal power structure, what issues the company had, what the job would really entail etc. They then made an offer and would not negotiate and she turned them down (to their surprise.)
To her surprise they called her back two months later and made an offer she could not refuse. They realized just how awesome she was when she left and left a void they badly needed to fill.
It worked out tremendously for her.
Oh, and the economy prediction…just like the housing debacle. It will look great, rich people will get richer and then it’ll fall fast and furious just like the house of cards it will be built on.
It scares the crap outta me.
I don’t think the economy is going to take off. Too much uncertainty and businesses don’t like that. Plus, a trade war is going to really hurt our economy.
As for using a temp agency - that’s nothing new - but certainly worth a try by submitting one’s resume to agencies.
emilybee when you call and talk to a recruiter you must tell them you are interested in temp to hire or direct hire only(unless you want a temp job)
people keep using the term temp agency it is now staffing agency (some are still old school temp only) this is not a re branding or some fancy update of the name. it is an adjustment to what many of them do now. using the word temp agency is from the old mindset. unless it is a temp agency it is now a staffing agency.
p.s. always call and talk to them before sending a resume. they need you as much as you need them. the dynamics are slightly shifted in your favor. because they need good people to place at multiple companies and they only get paid and retained as an agency if they deliver… they are eager to get you into their pipeline.
@awcntdb – you wrote a ton of words but they didn’t really support your earlier assertion that 80% of highly-skilled hiring is for foreign nationals. Likewise, while it’s clear to me that ACA has led to very careful management of hourly positions, I haven’t seen much discussion that its affected white-collar hiring as these positions commonly already employer paid health insurance budgeted in.
Much like the French companies that routinely hire their 49th employee but never their 50th due to increased regulations and their associated compliance costs, the US has different incentives–hire another hourly employee who gets 29 hours/week instead of giving existing employees those hours. I can’t even call this an unintended consequence as this had to have been obvious to just about everyone crafting the law.
fragbot an easy solution that will hopefully be codified into law soon, would be bumping small employer status up to 75 employees or less. that would you be an easy awesome jolt to hiring. you ask for 100 compromise at 75 pass it as law and the president signs it. wow, that would be a very non controversial easy non partisan thing to do.(I am sure some will complain they always do)
“We currently have the lowest labor participation rate in the last 40 years”
I agree that a certain amount of the workforce has aged out due to an aging population. We are also in a period of increased college participation. As far as some of the comments made about “untrue” unemployment rates, I’d love to see some references backing up those comments.
“this where one is seeing the replacement of foreign workers for native workers because foreign workers do not qualify for the ACA or many payroll taxes for that matter.”
Under ACA, all lawfully present immigrants (green card holders and such) must have insurance, so I’m not getting this ^ at all.
“All this though is out the window 1/21/2017, as new rules, lower taxes, lower mandated costs, and less regulation will make it more advantageous to hire native-born workers, which is culturally more stable for a company to do. This is what companies are planning for right now and that is a good thing.”
This is too simplistic, IMO. Some new rules will restrict trade and limit/increase the cost on the importation of components which will have negative affects on both the economy and US job market. It’s not a scenario where all the policies of the new administration will be creating jobs. Also, what the heck does “culturally more stable” even mean?! Diversity of thought and experience is a good thing for companies.
doschicos the unemployment rate is calculated by dropping long term unemployed out of the % and does skew the % .