Jon Osborne's Blog

My moral quandary

In our latest annual staffing firm survey, we asked staffing firms--500 of them--the following question: "What marketing tactic would you say has the highest bang-to-buck return on spend/effort?"

It seemed like an innocent question at the time--who knew it would put me on a philosophical knife edge between untarnished virtue and eternal damnation?

The whole problem started when the survey results... More

How many temporary staffing firms are there in the U.S.?

The answer we used to give to that question was 9,500.
 
That was based largely on a relatively definitive, though also tardy, estimate, which came from the U.S. Economic Census.  In 2002, that infrequent though comprehensive survey put the number of ongoing temporary staffing firms at 9,124.  We adjusted that number upward to compensate for some mis-categorization of which we were... More

My very last pitch for cafeteria-style healthcare benefits

Back in November 2007, I warned that temp benefits were "one of the biggest political icebergs in the staffing world's waters," and I recommended a solution that could steer the industry clear of danger.  The solution I had in mind was cafeteria-style benefits.  From that blog of many months ago:

Instead of paying a worker, for example, $20/hour, a staffing firm could pay $17/hour,... More