Staffing Industry Job Growth
From AmericanStaffing.net
After losing 1.14 million jobs—37% of its work force—during the 2007–09 recession, the U.S. staffing industry began to grow again in July 2009. That green shoot marked a turning point for the industry. And it marked a turning point for the economy. The recession appeared to have ended.
Job losses in other industries would continue for months, but at least the economic contraction had abated, and U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) resumed expansion in the third quarter of 2009.
The business cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research has yet to declare the end of the recession—the trough—but many economists believe it occurred in the summer of 2009. Despite its bureaucratic name, NBER is a nongovernmental organization; the dating committee is considered the official arbiter of U.S. economic cycles. The committee looks at several economic measures, including GDP, income, and employment. It takes its time in declaring turns in the economy. For example, it announced the December 2007 beginning of the recession a whole year after it started, Dec. 11, 2008. And it didn't declare the end of the relatively mild 2001 recession until 20 months after it was over.
On April 12, 2010, the committee issued a statement that although most indicators had turned up, it "decided that the determination of the trough date on the basis of current data would be premature. Many indicators are quite preliminary at this time and will be revised in coming months."
NBER's cautiousness hasn't stopped others from declaring an end:
Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, reported to Congress on July 21, 2010, that economic expansion began in the middle of 2009.
"The Economy Has Hit Bottom" headlined a July 23, 2009, Wall Street Journal op-ed by Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton University economics professor and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis uses July 2009 (third quarter) as an estimate for the end of the recession, pending NBER's announcement.
The ASA Staffing Index bottomed out the week of June 29, 2009, and has grown almost nonstop since, strongly suggesting that the end of June was the turning point—the trough.
http://www.americanstaffing.net/statistics/economic.cfm