Labor Day look ahead

Labor Day is a week away, and with jobs – or the lack thereof – as the topic of the year, you’ve barely time to plan and execute a compelling labor package for next weekend.

The fates – and the feds – are cooperating, with the monthly spate of employment reports due out later this week. They include:

• Tuesday: The ADP Employment Report. Produced by the nationwide payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc., which claims to pay one out of every six workers in the country, the report is based on ADP’s inside view of the payroll situation among its 500,000 clients. Sign up here for free e-mail releases.

The ADP report is of interest because of its scope and because it distinguishes between the manufacturing and service sectors, and provides a breakdown based on size of business by number of employees.

• Wednesday: U.S. Department of Labor’s productivity report - includes wage and hours-worked data.

• Thursday: U.S. Department of Labor’s weekly initial jobless claims report.

• Friday: The big one: The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly employment situation report. For a review of the data compiled in this monthly roundup, check out my previous tipsheets on the job reports.

Another helpful report just issued: the American Staffing Association’s second-quarter survey, which shows that temporary employment continued to stabilize throughout spring and early summer. Since some analysts believe temporary and contract hiring picks up before the permanent job market does, it’s a handy benchmark to understand.

But those are layering tools; you don’t want to petrify your audience with bare statistics. Some ideas for compelling packages (which also lend themselves to video and animated graphics, as well as print-and-save infoboxes for readers) include:

• Employment forecast Q&A with eight or 12 of your area’s major employers. Don’t forget colleges and universities, health systems, state and local government and nonprofits as well as corporate and small business employers. This makes for a great infographic or other alternative storytelling technique.

• A recap of union membership in your region; highlight gains, losses and trends but also talk with officials and labor relations experts about new paradigms in union-employer cooperation.

• Select a neighborhood, an apartment building, a street and canvass it, mapping out the employment situation in each household compared to a year ago.

• Take the contrarian tack and find success stories. Some people are thriving despite the recession, snaring good jobs at great salaries. Locate them and share their tips.

• Retraining. What public programs are in the works, what are private employers and economic development agencies planning, what courses of study (like nursing) are overbooked, what are mid-career, displaced workers doing to find a new niche? Readers love career makeover features and they’re an inspiring flip side to a dismal jobs scene.

• Track your local workforce. Collect data on the average salaries of local residents in different professions. Feature a person from each occupation and list key statistics about their area of employment.

Come back to Your Daily Tipsheet each morning for advice on where to find sources, background and creative ways to make financial news and trends relevant to your audience.

Covering Temp Firms

If you’re looking for a fresh angle to the jobs story, a couple of imminent earnings reports will give you a timely news peg.

Tomorrow, staffing industry giant Manpower Inc., reports quarterly financial results. And next week, on July 28, its equally global counterpart Kelly Services Inc. releases earnings, giving you ample reason to report a solid and audience-friendly piece on the state of temporary work in your region.

Temping is a viable income stream for many of your readers and a way for displaced workers to keep a toehold in the workforce. Don’t overlook the industry as a source of work-life stories and job-market forecasts.

Robert Half International Inc., parent of Accounttemps and other contingent-workforce firms, posted its second-quarter results last week. Revenue was down to $749 million from $1.2 billion in the same period a year before, while profits plummeted to $5.4 million $74.6 million a year ago.

But while they’ve taken the same economic hits as most other industries, staffing firms represent a multi-billion-dollar annual business, with more than 2 million workers a day being placed in assignments that can last a day or a year. Demand for temps dropped sharply in late 2008 but the pace of the fallout is slowing so far this year. It also, analysts say, tends to rebound sooner than the permanent job market, so temping activity can be a bellwether of employment activity in your region.

Some 6,000 firms operate about 20,000 branches nationwide, so it shouldn’t be hard to find sources and anecdotes. Niche firms abound, serving sectors from health care to autos to construction. Not surprisingly, the smaller shops are more accessible than the publicly-traded corporations. Try several for a frank discussion about what they are seeing in your territory, what concerns them and what their forecast is for the balance of the year.

The American Staffing Association, a national trade group, operates a helpful Web site and its state-by-state chapter directory
can help you home in on local contacts. The site also features industry FAQs and other materials in its media relations channel.

Another avenue: Talk to major employers about their outlook for hiring temps. Don’t overlook government agencies, universities and K-12 school districts; they rely on staffing firms to fill temp posts ranging from scientists to substitute teachers.

The consulting firm Staffing Industry Analysts offers a free daily e-mail feed; sign up at the site. While not primarily intended as a media resource, their consulting staff may be available to comment on trends or point you toward statistics.

Come back to Your Daily Tipsheet each morning for advice on where to find sources, background and creative ways to make financial news and trends relevant to your audience.