This insight is an update to our findings from a comparative analysis of monthly trends in staffing driven employment among 70 metropolitan areas that report such data on a current basis. It focuses on:

• year-over-year numeric changes in staffing employment levels,
• year-over-year percent changes in staffing employment levels
• trends in the pace of those changes.

We have combined and distilled the data into a “Staffing Growth Score,” which we offer as an accessible indicator of the relative overall robustness of each labor market. (See About the Data for details.)

Leaders

• First place:  The St. Louis MO-IL metro area topped our ranking of markets this month, with y/y growth of 2.8% in staffing employment and a trend of acceleration in rate of growth over both the last twelve- and six-months.
• Second place:  The Baltimore MD metro area, which held the first place position for the last two months, took second place; its 3.7% y/y growth is still relatively strong, but Baltimore’s previous trend of acceleration in growth appears to have moderated.  Last month, Fresno CA had taken second place, but staffing growth there has slowed and the city now ranks fifteenth place of the 70 metros examined.
• Third place:  The San Antonio TX metro area took third place, with staffing employment growth of 1.7% y/y, which, while modest, has remained in positive territory for four consecutive months. The trend shows acceleration over both the past twelve- and six-months.

Laggards

• Last place:  The worst-performing market was Detroit, which not only lost 10.4% of staffing jobs over the last twelve months—9,000 staffing jobs in total—but which is also seeing an acceleration in rate of decline both on a twelve-month and six-month basis.
• Second to last place:  Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale AZ scored next-to-last place, with a decline in staffing employment of 8.8%, and a similar pattern of accelerating contraction.
• Third to last place:  Wichita KS has lost 16.9% of its staffing jobs in just the last 12 months. The rate of decay has been accelerating and the twelve-month trend is now steeper than any other metro area.

Biggest changes in rank

• Biggest improvements in rank:

  1.  Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI, from #49 to #24
  2.  Gary IN, from #37 to #16

• Biggest deterioration in rank:

  1.   Chicago-Naperville-Joliet IL, from #18 to #45
  2.   Colorado Springs CO, from #48 to #67

General trends

• At an aggregate level, the metro areas we investigated saw staffing employment fall by a median of 3.5% during the 12 months ending in October 2008. That compares with the 2.4% median fall that we observed in our last report, suggesting that the decay has continued to accelerate in recent months.
• The data also suggests that the median metro area is still seeing mild/nominal deterioration (a slope of -0.2%), unchanged from our previous reading.
• Only 7.1% of the metros examined are seeing year-over-year growth in staffing employment combined with any degree of acceleration in growth; 36% are experiencing contraction at an increasing pace; the remaining 57% of metros are mixed, either contracting at a moderating pace, or expanding at a deteriorating pace.

About the Data
The data included in this report represents our analysis of staffing employment levels from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics (CES) program, which surveys 150,000 businesses and government agencies, representing roughly 390,000 individual worksites.

It represents employment changes with regard to Employment Services (NAICS 5613). While this category is dominated by temporary staffing (about three-quarters), it also includes:  PEO-covered employees and agency internal personnel.

Although almost all large city metros are covered in this analysis, data was not available for a few large metros (e.g., Miami), and smaller metros also generally did not release current staffing data.

No data was available for metros in the following territories: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

The staffing growth score is a weighted indicator based on staffing employment volume growth over the preceding 12 months, staffing employment percentage growth over the preceding 12 months, and the rate of change (acceleration/deceleration) in year-over-year growth rates over the preceding 12 months and the preceding 6 months. The score has a maximum of 100 and a minimum of zero.