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Show Recent Upswing In Hiring of Temporary Workers
by Mara Lee The Hartford Courant
There is some good news in Connecticut's
job market, despite a continued barrage of grim data. It's halting
and slow, but in the past month or two, companies have been calling temporary
agencies and asking for workers. Connecticut, as usual, is a bit behind
the nation in a return to hiring, even in the temporary work arena.Nationally,
this trend began in September, and gained strength in October and November.
Nationwide, temporary agencies added more than 50,000 workers in November
and 46,000 in December, an increase of 2 to 3 percent each month. Temp
hiring is often a harbinger of improvement after recessions because
it means companies have more work, although they are still not confident
enough to hire permanent staff. There are no state figures available
yet, but a Courant survey of six temporary agencies in the region,
from small family-owned companies to national powerhouses, found that
five of the six are seeing an uptick in demand. Jobpro had an incremental
improvement in client demand in November, and has stayed at that level,
Vice President Jennifer Beck said. The agency has two offices, in East
Hartford and West Hartford, and has a few hundred temps on assignment. "It's
certainly not a situation where companies are aggressively hiring,
even temps," she said. "It's quiet. Companies are making
slight adjustments in their staffing. Many companies are still not
hiring, they're hanging with what they have. Most of the people we're
speaking with, they're waiting and seeing the way things go."Crysta
Rodriguez, 27, of Hartford, registered with Jobpro on Friday, hoping
to benefit from the first stirrings of the recovery. She has a part-time
janitorial job for 4½ hours each weekday evening, at $8.50 an
hour, but lost her $9.75 hourly factory job at HomeGoods in May 2008,
when many people were laid off, she said. She said the HomeGoods job
was only steady for the last two months of 2007. By January 2008, they
started cutting hours.Rodriguez said Hector Girald, a co-worker at
her janitorial job, recommended that she register for temp work. Girald,
19, of Hartford, dropped out of Hartford's public schools, and lost
his $9-an-hour factory job at New Britain's Norpaco Gourmet Foods in
November. After registering with Jobpro, he started getting assignments
at New Britain's Southpack, shipping digital cameras and SIM cards.
Most weeks he gets at least three days there, at minimum wage."Sometimes
I even get the whole week," he said. "Depends on how much
work there is." "Right now it's very hard to find work anywhere," he
said, and he's been pleased with how Jobpro connected him to this opportunity. "I'll
take anything right now." Temp agencies are hearing that a lot,
and from candidates with far more education and experience than Girald.
Crush Of Applicants
"We are inundated with people. That's been going on for six months," said
Nancy Cronin, a senior manager in A.R. Mazzotta Employment Specialists'
Middletown office. The staffing agency also has offices in Westbrook
and Wallingford. "Right now, people will come in and tell you they'll
do anything. That's not something that you like to hear," she said. "People
are scared, and they haven't worked in a while. You see a lot of people
apply for jobs for which they're very overqualified. "Unfortunately
for downsized professionals, employers choosing temps to answer phones
or work in a warehouse don't usually pick people who used to make $50,000
to $100,000.Sean Lee, regional director for Manpower's New England offices,
said people with master's degrees apply, saying: "I've been out
of work for two years. I'll do anything to bring some income in." "The
customers are so selective these days. They're not really willing to
look at these people for temp-to-hire positions, unless it's not that
dramatic of a fallback for them." "They don't want to overhire," said
Eileen Candels, vice president for Kelly Services' Hartford office. She
tries to place those candidates by offering them substitute teaching
assignments, which require bachelor's degrees. She said the uptick in
demand for her agency's workers "is slow, but it's noticeable, because
of how quiet it's been earlier. "Temporary agencies saw the number
of assignments drop like a stone in September 2008, when Lehman Brothers
failed and the credit meltdown took off. Agencies around the region said
the positions dropped 30, 40, even 45 percent. Cronin, who has worked
in staffing for 22 years, said, "It was shocking. It was hard, it
was very hard."
Harbinger Of Recovery?
Jennifer Arenas, metro market manager for Robert Half International's
Hartford, New Haven, Shelton and Springfield offices, repeated the conventional
wisdom as she talked about increased interest in her agency's workers. "The
great news about that is the temporary sector generally foreshadows what
the [overall job market] is going to show in the next couple of months," she
said.But unfortunately, the conventional wisdom is a little ahead of
reality. After the 2001 recession, temporary hiring clearly started improving
in February 2002, but fell from September until May 2003, when its second
strong upswing began.The overall job market didn't start growing until
September 2003 — 22 months after the official end of the recession.If
this recession followed that pattern, the overall number of jobs would
start growing around May 2011. Nik Theodore, director of the Center for
Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said
economists say the job market starts recovering three to six months after
temporary hiring picks up. But he said they forget that February-August
2002 temp growth "was not the harbinger of a general recovery. We
have to understand, the economy's going to come back in fits and starts. "In
good times, companies frequently hire temporary workers onto their full-time
staffs if they prove themselves. That's not as often the case right now. "There
are a lot more customers saying, 'I would love to, but I can't.' More
companies are keeping people on as temps longer. They're just not feeling
the confidence to say I'm ready to commit to this," Jobpro's Beck
said. But staffing managers agree that customers are telling them they
anticipate bringing on more temps in the next few months. Manpower, with
eight offices in Connecticut and three in Greater Hartford, has large
corporate manufacturing clients telling them they have more orders, and
they'll need more people to produce the goods. They want to try them
out as temps first, Lee said. Manpower is forecasting strong growth in
its business as a result.
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Market (video) 1/10
Temp Jobs Helping Turn Around Economy (video)
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Employers Added Most Jobs In 3 Years In March
(article) 4/10 |
