...and on the subject of bad news: the WSJ is reporting (registration required) that temporary employment has fallen for each of the last six months.

From the article:

Businesses generally are believed to dismiss temps before cutting their permanent workers. While temporary-staffing firms sense more caution from clients, they note the shift isn't severe. "It's sluggish. We're not hearing from people that the slowdown is going to be so acute that it could be a precursor to a recession," said Richard Wahlquist, president of the American Staffing Association, a trade group.

"I am really not concerned at this point," said Charles Sigrist, president and chief executive officer of Stivers Staffing Services Inc., a Chicago-based firm with 30 offices, including one in Pittsburgh where Mr. Trimmer has been working. Business was flat during the summer but, he says, "I don't think we're in a situation like we were in [the recessions of] 1981, 1991 and 2001," Mr. Sigrist said. "It's too early to say that."

The temp sector took off in the 1990s as companies sought to expand in a tight labor market without committing themselves to full-time, often tenured employees with full benefits. Temp employment ballooned from 1.2 million jobs at the start of the 1990s to almost 2.7 million in April 2000, before pulling back in the recession of 2001.

It surged and then hit a plateau at the end of 2005, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At last count, 2.6 million workers -- about 2% of the total work force outside farming -- are in temp jobs.

As Mr. Sigrist says, it's too early to definitively say that the recruiting business is heading into tough times (again), but these are the warning signs to which we need to pay attention.

The recruiting business is going to see amazing growth in the long term, but that doesn't mean that we won't see some painful contractions along the way.

So...

How's business? 

Do you have a / what is your plan for handling an employment recession?