The September 2020 Economic Report continues to show growth in the U.S. economy, although at a slowing pace. The job gains made in September (661,000) are strong but weak in comparison to August (1.4 million), July (1.8 million), June (4.8 million), and May (2.5 million).

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Amtec Tip of the Month

What is RPO you ask? In a nutshell, Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is when an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment processes to a staffing company. With RPO, even a company with limited HR and recruiting resources can efficiently recruit qualified candidates to fill open positions.

Here are 5 Ways RPO Can Boost Recruiting Success During the Pandemic:

• Shortens the time to hire. RPO allows a company to focus on the regular day-to-day business tasks, while the RPO provider finds the candidates to fill open positions quickly.
• Makes recruiting flexible. RPO allows a business  to scale up or down quickly based on needs of the company.
• Decreases costs. Data from the Aberdeen Group showed companies that used an RPO provider for their hiring functions reduced their overall cost-per-hire by 20 percent.
• Improves the quality of candidates. Recruiting experts know how to tap into huge candidate networks to find the best available talent. After all, this is what they do all day.
• Saves time. Recruiters know all the steps to get team members onboarded and working very quickly

Read more about how recruitment process outsourcing can ease COVID19 staffing stress

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Additional Information

If you’re unable to view our September 2020 Economic Report or would like additional information, read below:

• The unemployment rate declined by 0.5% to 7.9% in September. The number of unemployed persons fell by 1 million to 12.6 million.

• Total employment increased by 661,000 in September after rising by 1.4 million in August. Employment was about 4.4% lower than its February level.

• Leisure and hospitality added 318,000 jobs.
• Retail trade added 142,400 jobs.
• Professional and business services added 89,000 jobs.
• Transportation and warehousing added 73,600 jobs.
• Manufacturing added 66,000 jobs.
• Education and health services added 40,000 jobs.
• Financial activities added 37,000 jobs.
• Other services added 36,000 jobs.
• Information added 27,000 jobs.
• Construction added 26,000 jobs.
• Wholesale trade added 18,700 jobs.
• Utilities added 2,800 jobs.
• Mining and logging added 1,000 jobs.
• The government lost 216,000 jobs.

• Average hourly earnings for all employees rose by 2¢ to $29.47.

Note: Data below represents changes from different months.

• Job openings rose 10.3% in July to 6.6 million openings.

• Dow Jones dropped 2.3% in September with a high of 29,162.88 points.

• Housing starts dropped by 5.1% to 1,416,000 in August.

• Consumer price index rose 0.4% in August.

• The federal prime rate remained at 3.25% in September after dropping from 4.25% in March.

• Retail inventories rose 1.2% in July to $595 billion.

• Manufacturing hours worked per week rose 0.5% to an average of 40.2 hours in September.

• Manufacturing new orders rose by 0.7% to $470 billion in August.

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The information for this report was developed using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, Yahoo Finance, and FedPrimeRate.com.

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