By Shawn Langlois, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Staffing agencies, paced by Robert Half International, saw their shares gain ground along with the broader market on Friday, driven by some upbeat data from the U.S. unemployment front.
Tig Gilliam, head of staffing company Adecco's North American division, says growth in temporary jobs is good news for the U.S. economy.
"What typically happens in a recovery is companies realize they need additional resources and they look for those in a very flexible fashion," told MarketWatch in a
video interview. "And that's through the temporary employment market."
Robert Half /quotes/comstock/13*!rhi/quotes/nls/rhi (RHI 25.17, -0.45, -1.76%) led the way, up 4% to $29.92 while Monster Worldwide /quotes/comstock/13*!mww/quotes/nls/mww (MWW 13.33, +0.11, +0.83%) and Manpower /quotes/comstock/13*!man/quotes/nls/man (MAN 47.10, -0.77, -1.61%) weren't far behind, up 3.8% each.
Adecco sees good news in jobs numbers
Tig Gilliam, North America chief for temporary staffing company Adecco, says growth in temporary jobs is good news for the U.S. economy.
All three have more than doubled over the past year.
Gilliam said that the economy added about 284,000 temporary jobs since August, which he described as a precursor to overall job growth.
"We're still in the range of no job growth and no real job losses," he cautioned. "So it's not great news ... but it's part of the recovery process."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 122.06 points, or 1.2%, to 10,566.2, leaving it 2.3% higher for the week.
The gains were bolstered by a report that the nation's jobless rate held steady at 9.7% as the number of people employed rose by 308,000.
Analysts polled by MarketWatch were actually looking for the unemployment rate to rise to 9.8%.
Triggering the rise among the staffer stocks, the survey pointed out that temp help made up a big percentage of the 42,000 jobs added by private-service producing industries. Health care was another strong area.
Shawn Langlois is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco.
