As the US accelerates its recovery from the pandemic, businesses are looking to ramp up hiring and return operations to a new normal. Using SIA’s interactive Jobs Report tool, IT staffing firms can track the labor force recovery on a monthly basis by state and metropolitan area to assess markets and opportunities. SIA also recently improved the tool, enabling users to analyze data by industry as well.
While IT staffing displayed resiliency in 2020, industries serviced by IT staffing firms are in varying phases of recovery, which is greatly influencing hiring trends. One example of how the Jobs Report tool can be used is to examine the professional and business services industry. Professional and business services includes the tech/telecom sector, the largest industry segment for US IT staffing. We estimate tech/telecom accounts for about one-third of US IT staffing alone. Professional and business services saw employment dip by 10% year over year in April 2020 compared to 13.5% for all non-farm jobs, an encouraging sign for IT staffing’s most important industry vertical.
The Jobs Report tools can also be used for more granular analysis. For instance, the two largest metropolitan areas in the US for IT staffing are New York-Newark-Jersey City area on the East Coast and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, area in California, representing about 6% and 4% of the US temporary IT staffing sector, respectively. With the Jobs Report tool, we can compare professional and business services employment between the two regions.
Professional and business services employment, year-over-year change
(click on chart to enlarge)
Source: BLS and SIA
Looking at professional and business services employment within these two metros, we see levels falling in New York-Newark-Jersey City and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, declining by 12.6% and 11.7% respectively in April 2020. However, the recovery since then has been relatively constant and in May, employment reached roughly 95% of February 2020 levels in both areas.
Another important industry segment of IT staffing is financial services/banking/insurance, which makes up about 20% of the US IT staffing market by our estimates. The finance industry weathered the pandemic better than most, particularly in New York-Newark-Jersey City where employment decreased by 4.2% in April 2020, compared with 5.5% in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim.
Financial activities employment, year-over-year change
(click on chart to enlarge)
Source: BLS and SIA
Despite experiencing a choppier recovery than professional and business services, the finance industry has also achieved a 95% recovery rate as of May 2021. The promising recoveries of IT staffing’s two largest industry verticals, which together comprises more than half of the segment, bodes well for a meaningful recovery for IT staffing this year. However, as the Jobs Report tool helps to shows us, business trends not only vary by industry vertical, but regionally as well.
SIA’s interactive Jobs Report tool uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to capture trends in employment, worker earnings and hours, temporary help penetration rate and labor turnover. SIA corporate members may access the interactive tool here. For additional color on US employment trends, check out SIA’s monthly Jobs Report.
