We are seeing positive signs of an economic recovery while at the same time still seeing plenty of signs of lingering problems.  One bright spot in the job market is a marked increase in temporary hires.  The American Staffing Association has indicated that temporary hires of contingent employees has risen by 23% since July 2009.  That percentage equates to 166,000 temp jobs created according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This is fairly typical of what happens in a job market as the economy begins to emerge from a recession.  What appears to be different now, is that many employers are looking to stay flexible in the long term by using contingent talent to manage everything from projects to entire functional departments.  That also means the traditional definition of a “temp” is now expanding from clerical and manual labor roles to engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers and other professions at all ranks and payscales.

We have also seen our clients inquiring more often about the viability of making some new roles into contingent or consulting-oriented hires. Qualifind, Inc. has had a number of clients convert middle management permanent hire roles into consulting roles.  These clients have done so in order to retain their flexibility during the tumultuous economy and also take advantage of the increase in highly skilled talent that is more readily available.

We don’t necessarily see this happening in Mexico and particularly in the maquiladora industry due to restrictions within Mexican labor law, however we may see an uptick in contingent hires for U.S.-based roles that have responsibility in Mexico.

Warren Carter is an Executive Recruiter in Qualifind, Inc. You can share your responses with Warren by e-mail at: wcarter@quali-find.com

Qualifind, Inc. provides professional and executive search services for specific disciplines and industries throughout the U.S. and Mexico. We are a U.S. based firm with our corporate offices in San Diego, California. We have branch offices and recruiting staff in the U.S. (i.e Chicago, Austin) and Mexico (i.e. Monterrey,  Mexico City).