Hiring ramps up

First, an invite to learn from your peers. So far 51% of companies plan to increase their usage of flexible talent, yet only 29% have a formal policy.

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Here's what stands out this week:

• The freeze got revised away. August payrolls rose 162,000, triple the consensus, and June and July together were revised up by 55,000. Unemployment held at 4.1%.^[1][2]
• Output is growing faster than staff. The ISM Services index jumped to 55.4, its fastest pace since February, while its employment index fell to 47.8. ADP counted just 38,000 new private-sector jobs.^[3][4]
• Cuts and hiring are rising together. Announced job cuts rose 58% from July while announced hiring plans rose 725% from last August. ManpowerGroup's global Q4 hiring outlook climbed to +29%, and 62% of the employers adding staff say the driver is changing roles and skills.^[5][6]

Here's my interpretation of the data:

1. Hiring demand is here and materializing in different ways. The August gains came from bars and restaurants, local government education, construction, and manufacturing. Health care added 13,000 against a 32,000 monthly average, and information lost 23,000.^[2] That is not a market that stopped needing people. It is a market moving to where the work is.
2. The number that matters is 47.8, not 162,000. Services activity hit its fastest pace since February while services employment contracted.^[3] Companies are expanding what they produce without expanding who they employ. That gap is getting filled somewhere. It is being filled with contractors, specialists, and outside capacity, which is exactly the demand a headcount report never counts.
3. Companies are re-composing the workforce, not shrinking it. Cuts up 58% in a month and hiring plans up 725% in a year are the same story.^[5] Two thirds of the employers adding staff say the roles and skills they need are changing.^[6] The requisition you closed and the expertise you bought on contract are happening in the same quarter, inside the same budget.
4. This is the pattern we have been calling, and it is still running. The demand is real, and it keeps landing as skills, projects, and flexible capacity rather than net headcount. The buyers ahead of this have a way to bring that talent in that does not wait on a req to be approved. The ones behind are still explaining to a CFO why the plan says freeze and the work says grow.

Here's how Human Cloud is helping:

Be in the room with your peers.

We are hosting twenty senior contingent workforce and talent leaders for dinner at Del Frisco's in Dallas on Tuesday, September 29, the last night of SIA's CWS Summit.

Twenty seats. Tuesday, September 29, Del Frisco's Double Eagle, Dallas.

Request an invite →

Can't be in Dallas? Book an Executive Briefing.

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We'd love to see how we can help,

- Tony

Tony Buffum Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Human Cloud. 20+ years in global HR and talent transformation. Former CHRO at FLIR Systems, VP HR at Stanley Black & Decker, VP HR Client Strategy at Upwork. Grab time with me »

PS: The expanded H-1B and L-1 biometric fee took effect this week.[7] When the $100K H-1B fee was first announced, I wrote that it would push demand toward EORs and marketplaces, and that is exactly what has happened. Read the original piece »

Human Cloud Data

The payroll and EOR layer is what companies are shopping for

Every 55 seconds, someone is looking at a solution profile on Human Cloud. Here is what they are searching to find them.

What the data shows

Payroll processing searches rose 150% this month. Software rose 150%. Aerospace and defense rose 100%. Education technology rose 100%. Healthcare and life sciences rose 25%. Advisory consulting fell 40%.

That is the jobs report showing up in our own data. When output grows faster than headcount, the first thing a company needs is a way to pay and engage people it does not employ. That is why the payroll layer is climbing, and why EOR, payroll bureaus, fractional, skilled trades, facility management, and instructional design all showed up as searches this month after none of them were searched last month. The categories rising are the ones where the work is moving. The one falling is the one companies feel safest deferring. In the last full week, 52 distinct categories were searched on the platform. Nobody is browsing an industry. They are buying a specific problem off their plate.

Payroll Processing	+150% this month
Technology SaaS	+150% this month
Aerospace and Defense	+100% this month
EdTech	+100% this month
Creator Economies	+100% this month
Healthcare and Life Sciences	+25% this month
Advisory Consulting	-40% this month

Percentages are this month vs last month.

Want to take action? Launch an RFP for your biggest challenges. Need an EOR that can pay talent across five states and three countries? There was an RFP for that. A vetted marketing bench to scale across a PE portfolio? There was an RFP for that. Launch an RFP →