A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, the 2009 Executive Forum, that is.

In the course of putting together a presentation on some of our recent research, 'Research Ideas to Fight the Tide,' I mapped out some data we generated regarding staffing growth by metro area.  I wanted to show where in the U.S. staffing industry growth was relatively strong, by which I mean, of course, not going to Hell in a hand-basket.

An interesting pattern emerged:

In the above chart, the red dots are the ten "hottest" areas in terms of staffing employment growth; the tan dots are next text ten "hottest."  The high-ground seems to be not just in Texas, as we noted earlier in our research, but more generally in Texas as well as just north of the state and to a lesser degree around the gulf generally--seven of the top ten markets and three of the next ten are in this part of the country. 

Energy-related?