$$ Staffing Index Grows in Aug vs. July

I’m telling you…this is a leading indicator….

ASA:

Staffing employment in August is 27% higher than in the same month last year, according to the ASA Staffing Index.

The index for August is 95, up four points from 91 for July, suggesting that staffing employment has increased about 4% over the past month.

To view weekly index data, visit http://www.americanstaffing.net/statistics/historical_data.cfm.
The ASA Staffing Index is reported nine days after each workweek, making it a virtual real-time measure of staffing employment trends. ASA research shows that staffing employment is a coincident economic indicator and leading employment indicator, especially when the economy is emerging from a recession.

Here is the date since Jan 08 in visual terms

Why is this a leading indicator? If temporary staffing is still growing, the following correlations tend to hold.  According to the study:

Modeling of staffing employment and sales data from the ASA quarterly survey shows that GDP growth of about 1% is required for staffing industry growth. Based on 1992–2008 industry performance, quarterly GDP must grow at an annualized rate of 1.2% to increase temporary and contract staffing employment, and at a rate of 0.8% to increase staffing sales.

Both staffing employment and sales grew in 93% of the quarters in which GDP increased by 1.3% or more. With one exception—the fourth quarter of 2007, when the current recession started—both staffing employment and sales grew whenever GDP increased by 2% or more. Because of that sole exception, however, the probability of staffing growth with GDP at 2% or more is 97%.

The results of this analysis suggest that a sustained upturn in temporary and contract staffing employment would signal the end of the current recession and suggest that total nonfarm employment would begin to grow about three months later.