The number of employers planning to hire full-time permanent workers by the end of the year is unchanged from a year ago, though the number expecting to bring on temporary workers is up by half, says CareerBuilder’s mid-year hiring forecast.
The just released CareerBuilder forecast, based on a survey of 2,000 hiring managers and HR professionals conducted six weeks ago, found:
The optimism, however, doesn’t necessarily translate into immediate hiring plans. Only 30 percent of the respondents said they expected to add to their full-time, permanent headcount this quarter. That’s identical to what the survey respondents said a year ago, and is off from the 34 percent adding full-time headcount last quarter.
In its year ahead forecast released at the beginning of 2013, CareerBuilder reported that 26 percent of the hiring managers and HR respondents expected to add permanent, full-time workers. The forecast also found 40 percent of employers planned to hire temporary and contract workers during the year, up from 36 percent in 2012.
“Companies are adding more employees to keep pace with demand for their products and services, but they’re not rushing into a full-scale expansion of headcount in light of economic headwinds that still linger today,” said CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson. “The projected surge in temporary hiring from July to December is evidence of both a growing confidence in the market and a recession-induced hesitation to immediately place more permanent hires on the books.”
CareerBuilder’s finding about temp hiring plans is mirrored by the Palmer Forecast of a 6.4 percent third-quarter increase. According to consultants G. Palmer & Associates, staffing firms and agencies will increase their hiring by that much over the third quarter last year, on a seasonally adjusted basis.
The forecast also predicts a slowing, though still strong, increase in the number of new jobs created by the industry for the remainder of the year.
“Our forecast for the 2013 third quarter follows recent trends demonstrating growth and indicating another increase in demand for temporary workers, marking the fifteenth-consecutive quarter of year-over-year increases,” said Greg Palmer, founder and managing director of G. Palmer & Associates, an Orange County, California-based human capital advisory firm.
The report said the 2nd quarter results of temp agency hiring came in at a 6.9 percent increase over the same quarter in 2012. That was better than the 5.9 percent the Palmer Forecast predicted. “Results, in part, reflected increasing uncertainty in the economy,” the firm said in releasing its 3rd quarter forecast.
Greg Palmer also predicted that by the end of the year the temp penetration rate — the percentage of temporary workers in the total workforce — will surpass the record 2.03 percent set in May 2000.