September 2020 Economic Report

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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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

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.

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.