Week 20 was a very strong week for staffing, posting the largest hours & assignments combination since the start of this unmistakable recovery. The highlight for us: 3.7% more paid assignments than the prior week!
For those new to this brief blog, the numbers reflected are based on an aggregation of hosted Avionté data from hundreds of customers across the US. We used a “same-store sales” approach to ensure the data is clean. All hours, assignments, and gross payroll are from transactions that were processed. These numbers reflect a Sunday end date of May 17th, 2020.
We call this blog Avionté RAW, because we are emphasizing the “raw” data as opposed to inferring the meaning behind the information. Every staffing company is different and will draw conclusions based on their business model. We don’t exactly know what is going to happen next, but our hope is that this will offer insight as to where things have been and potentially where they may be headed.
In addition to the very strong and significantly positive Assignment numbers, Hours and Gross Wages, here are the numbers:
It’s promising to see that Hours increased by nearly the same amount as Assignments (3.3% vs 3.7%). There continues to be a dip in hours per assignment (to 32.97, down slightly for the third week in a row), which supports the notion of considerable contingent workforce labor requirements. It would be challenging to envision a higher WoW% movement in Assignment and Hours than 3% with any consistency.
With the significant amount of unemployment claims being filed, We worry that the workforce participation rate pressures would limit the number of new workers. For the last several years, staffing firms have been dealing with more Orders than they had people willing to fill them. With many workers making more collecting unemployment than working, the orders/employee disparity would seem to increase. But, 3.7% more paid assignments would support this risk has been mitigated.
Users
We are also tracking our distinct users as a proxy to see what staffing firms are experiencing from an internal staff point of view. Week 20 showed a slight increase (.3%). With revising up the previous week’s numbers, we have seen four straight weeks of positive growth. Staffing firms are being cautious and hiring slower than the Assignment/Hours growth rates, as expected.
Graphs
The x-axis refers to the week number of 2020. We just finished week 20. The y-axis labels have been removed for privacy and scale reasons.
For a Year over Year comparison – here is a graph of hours for customers since 2018:
States
We also like to show the individual state performance. The state is where the work was performed (customer worksite) and we’ve only included states where we have substantial hours (> 10,000), to help display trending. Note, these numbers still have the potential to be skewed by large bi-weekly payrolls or similar big swings.
In addition, we have added COVID-19 Resources to the Avionté Knowledge Base. This resource center provides information from across the US and Canada that could affect how you do business. Check it frequently for the latest information and business trends occurring during these challenging times.
About Avionté
Avionté is a leader in enterprise staffing and recruiting software solutions, offering innovative end-to-end staffing solutions to over 900 customers and 25,000 users throughout the U.S. and Canada. Avionté delivers a robust platform for clerical, light industrial, IT, and professional staffing firms to maximize profits and boost productivity.
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