Silicon Valley temp jobs on the rise
September 01, 2010
San Jose Mercury News
By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.
Sept. 01--Temporary jobs in Silicon Valley are on the rise this year in what is traditionally viewed as a precursor to increases in regular, full-time employment, a Bureau of Labor Statistics study showed Wednesday.
In the San Jose metro region temporary hiring began rising in January after a drop in early 2009. The tiny sector -- it represents only about 2.3 percent of the valley's total private employment -- is up 14.6 percent from last year.
The San Francisco metro region, however, showed no gains over the year. The region includes San Mateo County.
In the recessions of the early 1990s and early 2000s, temp jobs fell ahead of full time jobs, and then rose as the recession ended, followed by full-time job increases, the BLS said. Temp jobs are often a bridge to full-time employment as the economy recovers, according to one study.
The temp sector does not capture the many thousands of consultants, contractors and other non-traditional types of workers common in Silicon Valley's tech industry.
There are about 18,100 temp jobs in the valley and 13,700 temp jobs in the San Francisco metro region. Oakland has 14,400.
"The number may seem very small, but in the past temp employment has preceded growth in private sector employment in both the Silicon Valley and the nation," said Amar Mann, branch chief and supervisory economist at the BLS office in San Francisco. "It's been a favorable omen to private sector growth in the
past."
The San Jose region's private employment is little changed from a year ago -- there are 752,900 private jobs in July compared to 751,600 a year ago. But that's only part of the story. The total fell to 736,700 in January of this year and has been climbing ever since.
The San Francisco metro region is struggling back from a deep dive in private sector jobs, from 799,300 in December to 781,500 in January. Now at 785,000 jobs, it has a way to go before matching its 803,500 jobs in July 2009.
There are about 2.3 million temp workers in the U.S.
The BLS reported that temp jobs have grown sharply in the past two decades across the U.S., becoming common in higher paid, technical and professional occupations. In the West, there's been an 88 percent increase in temporary help jobs since 1990, the BLS said.
"There's been a shift, a fairly dramatic shift in the last few years from some of the things we think of as traditional temporary help services," said Richard Holden, western regional commissioner for the BLS in San Francisco. Employment services -- the temp job category -- has seen a 5.6 percent growth in real wages (adjusted for inflation) the second half of this decade, where they've been flat for all other occupations.
For example, temp jobs in legal occupations have risen 87 percent and wages are up 15 percent. Financial services have seen a 50 percent rise in temps, with wages up 8 percent.
The report said that the "tremendous growth" of temporary help services nationally is driven by the "flexibility and low labor cost of temporary workers."
But the sector's lower wages also reflect the construction, clerical and retail trade jobs that it includes.
The average annual wage for temp workers in Santa Clara County was $43,700 in 2009 and $42,800 in San Mateo County. That compares to annual wages for full-time jobs of $82,000 in Santa Clara and $78,000 in San Mateo counties.
Spurred by the dot-com bubble growth, there were 44,000 temp workers in the valley at the end of 2000. When the bubble burst the following year, that sank to 21,000 temp jobs, and continued to drop to about 19,000 by the end of the following year.
After climbing to about 22,000 in 2008, the recession sent the number down to 15,000 in January 2009.
Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419.
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40-70 mph winds could hit Maine coast in next 36 hours
September 02, 2010
Bangor Daily News (Bangor, Maine)
By Bill Trotter, Bangor Daily News, Maine
Sept. 02--ELLSWORTH, Maine -- Hurricane Earl continued to march north Thursday toward the North Carolina shore, prompting federal officials to warn the public to make contingency plans as soon as possible.
"This is a day of action," Craig Fugate, administrator of Federal Emergency Management Agnecy," said Thursday morning during a telephone conference with reporters. "Conditions are going to deteriorate rapidly along the East Coast tonight and tomorrow."
Hurricane warnings for the Category 4 storm, which has estimated sustained winds of 140 mph, have been established for coastal North Carolina, Cape Cod and southeast Massachusetts, while all of the Maine coast is under a tropical storm watch. Officials with the Maine Emergency Management Agency said Thursday that the tropical storm watch means sustained winds of between 39 and 73 mph are possible along the coast in the next 36 hours.
"If you haven't done so prior to the issuance of the watch, it's a good time to begin preparations for the potential storm, especially for those actions that require extra time," MEMA indicated Thursday morning in a prepared statement.
At about 11 a.m. Thursday, the storm was located roughly 300 miles due south of Cape Hatteras, N.C. Bill Read, director of the National Hurricane Center, said Thursday that the storm's center likely will pass just east of Nantucket Island, immediately south of Cape Cod.
"The [hurricane's] eye is going to be huge by then," Read said.
Read said the storm is expected to grow in size, though not necessarily in strength, during an eyewall replacement cycle, but when this might occur he was not sure. An eyewall replacement cycle is when a small, tight eye -- the calm center of a hurricane around which the storm's winds swirl -- collapses and is replaced by a larger eye, he said.
This could spread the hurricane's winds out over a greater storm diameter, he said.
Read said that, given the time of year, Earl's winds could take a toll on trees and tree limbs because they are still covered with foliage. The presence of leaves on the trees makes them more susceptible to powerful winds, he said, which could bring limbs and power lines down and even uproot trees.
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Most Asian stocks rise on improving US data
September 03, 2010
Associated Press/AP Online
TOKYO - Most Asian stock markets climbed Friday as investors took heart from improving U.S. housing and jobs data amid lingering worries over the pace of the global economic recovery.
But gains were modest across the region as investors took a wait-and-see stance ahead of closely-watched U.S. employment data due out Friday. The jobless rate for August is expected to rise to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent in July, according to Thomson Reuters.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 stock index rose 34.79 points, or 0.4 percent, to 9,097.63 in the morning session. South Korea's Kospi edged up 0.3 percent to 1,780.83. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.2 percent at 4,573.40.
Elsewhere, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 0.2 percent to 20,918.81. Markets in New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan all advanced in early trading.
But the Shanghai Composite Index slipped 0.1 percent to 2,652.14. Stocks in Malaysia also declined.
In New York on Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average added 50.63 points, or 0.5 percent, to 10,320.10.
Sentiment on Wall Street turned upbeat after the National Association of Realtors said Thursday that the number of buyers who signed contracts to purchase homes rose 5.2 percent in July after hitting a record low in June.
A fall in new claims for U.S. unemployment aid last week also helped lift sentiment. The Labor Department said Thursday that the number of American people requesting jobless benefits fell by 6,000 the previous week to a seasonally adjusted 472,000.
The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure, also fell by 2,500 to 485,500, the first drop after four straight increases. But even with the declines, U.S. jobless claims are still at much higher levels than they would be in a healthy economy.
When economic output is growing rapidly and employers are hiring, such claims generally drop below 400,000.
In currencies, the dollar rose to 84.38 yen in Tokyo Friday from 84.28 yen in New York late Thursday. The euro slipped to $1.2821 from $1.2828.
Benchmark oil for October delivery rose $1.11 to settle at $75.02 a barrel Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices dropped as low as $73.11 earlier in the session.
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Asian shares rise after big gains on Wall Street
September 02, 2010
Associated Press/AP Online
TOKYO - Asian stock markets advanced in early trading Thursday, after Wall Street soared on encouraging manufacturing data.
Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average jumped 1.2 percent to 9,027.88 as the dollar held its ground against the yen. Seoul's Kospi rose 0.4 percent to 1,771.73, and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.8 percent to 4,532.20.
In New York on Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average added 255 points, its best day since July 7. The index finished up 2.5 percent to close at 10,269.47.
Reports of stronger-than-expected manufacturing growth in China and the U.S snapped a run of discouraging data on the global economy. The Institute for Supply Management said manufacturing activity in the U.S. rose in August, in contrast to regional reports from recent weeks that pointed to a slowdown.
Broader indexes also had large gains. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 30.96, or 3 percent, to 1,080.29, and the Nasdaq gained 62.81, or 3 percent, to 2,176.84.
In currencies, the dollar stood at 84.30 yen from 84.44 yen late Wednesday. The euro held steady at $1.2796.
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Survey: Worker share of health insurance rising
September 02, 2010
The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Stacey Burling, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Sept. 02--The price of family health insurance didn't go up all that much last year, but most people who get their insurance through work would never know that.
As premiums rose 3 percent, employers kept their contribution flat while increasing the worker share by 14 percent, according to an annual survey released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Education Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association.
That doesn't include the costs workers have to pay when they need to see a doctor. Those went up, too. Twenty-seven percent of workers now have annual deductibles of at least $1,000, up from 22 percent in 2009. Such high-deductible plans are far more common in small companies. Co-payments also went up.
During a conference call on the report, Drew Altman, Kaiser's president and chief executive officer, said he expects the trend of rising burdens for employees to continue. Eventually, he said, that can become a financial hardship and a barrier to care.
While health reform efforts focused on helping people without insurance, he said, the country should pay more attention to the fact that the "nature of insurance" is changing.
"We should have a clearer national discussion on what we actually think health insurance should be in this country," he said.
The survey's results make it clear why so many workers feel increasingly pinched by insurance costs.
Since 1999, inflation has risen by 31 percent while worker pay has gone up by 42 percent. The cost of health care premiums went up 138 percent. The worker share of that cost rose by 159 percent.
The employee's share had been relatively constant for much of the last decade, but rose last year. Altman charitably hypothesized that the recession forced businesses to choose between shifting costs to workers and laying off workers.
The average cost of an employer-provided family plan is now $13,770, up 114 percent from $6,438 in 2000. The employer contribution has risen by 102 percent to $9,773 while the worker share is up 147 percent to $3,997.
The trend is even more pronounced for workers who get individual insurance. There, the average total cost rose 104 percent from $2,471 in 2000 to $5,049 in 2010. The employer share rose 94 percent to $4,150 while the worker contribution rose from $334 to $899, a 169 percent increase.
Officials of the two survey organizations said few companies are taking advantage of data that would allow them to choose insurance on the basis of quality. They also said this year's relatively modest price increase was likely an anomaly related to the recession and concerns about the political climate during the health reform debate.
"I don't expect these very low rates of increase to continue," Altman said.
Contact staff writer Stacey Burling at 215-854-4944 or sburling@phillynews.com.
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