How Some Companies are Beating Competitors in a Key Labor Segment
The number of employees is down 5%...
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of employees on the job has still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. The number of employees on the job is currently 5% lower than the second half of 2019.
..but the number of non-employees is up 23%.
According to Brightfield’s data on non-employee workers, there are now 23% more contingent workers on the job than before the pandemic.
Brightfield’s Intelligence Reports help business leaders understand shifting labor markets.
Companies’ changing use of contingent workers and the shifts in local market skill availability and costs are the subject of a continuing series of Brightfield Intelligence Reports. Some highlights from the March Extended Workforce Intelligence Report include:
1. Companies are accelerating their IT projects by tapping contingent IT workers—software developers are up 49%
2. The pivot to virtual customer sales and support has doubled the number of those roles
3. The pandemic supply chain has hit its stride—light industrial roles are now up 43%; these new roles are mostly related to moving parts and products in warehouse settings, but manufacturing roles have also rebounded
4. There was a winter spike in the demand for contingent nurses to assist with COVID-19 vaccinations and other care
How some companies are beating competitors in the market for contingent workers
As companies add more contingent workers and pursue a “work-from-anywhere” strategy, we are seeing a divergence in competitiveness between the companies that have access to up-to-date data on local contingent labor markets and those companies that do not. The companies without access to current aggregated transaction data tend to rely on information screen-scraped from job posting sites or on rack rate price lists from suppliers of contingent workers. These companies end up not seeing emerging pools of high-quality workers before competitors and inevitably end up over-paying for specific skills.
Read the most recent Brightfield Intelligence Report here: Extended Workforce Intelligence Report - March 2021 Update
About TDX
Brightfield’s TDX contains the world’s largest dataset on current and historical contingent assignments in over 10,000 locations across 39 countries. TDX tools help companies ensure they are designing the right teams in the right locations at the right price. Brightfield’s TDX customers typically find over 10% in cost savings opportunities thanks to TDX’s data and analytics.
