On April 24, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its final rule banning the use of non-compete agreements in nearly all employer/employee relationships with the only exceptions being for senior executives. Those exempt executives must be in a policy making position and earn more than $151,164 annually, otherwise they are included in the ban. The effective date of the new rule was scheduled for Sept 4 but a U.S District Court judge in Dallas, Texas (Ada Brown) agreed to temporarily delay implementation until the challenge by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce can be argued on the full mer ..read more

Introduction I am aware that some staffing companies may still look at the U.S. federal  legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as a compliance issue. Although this law, and subsequent regulations, apply to most all businesses and public places. This article will go beyond compliance and focus on recruiting potential with the 21 million, non-institutionalized, Americans with disabilities. The compliance issues are universal, and most business and public places have long since made the required basic accommodations. Yet many employers have not explored looking at the large ..read more

Three more updates to our recent blog articles are on the following topics: Independent Contractor versus Employee, Recession Outlook (2024), and Litigation Risk Mitigation. 1.) Independent Contractor versus Employee We have written a couple of times on this important topic with the latest one being on July 12, 2023, with the title “In the Courts Again “Employee Vs.. Independent Contractor”. This blog article was about a court case in Minneapolis, MN where employees were awarded $254,000 in back wages and liquidated damages for having been misclassified as independent contractors. The employer ..read more

Three updates to our recent blog articles are on the following topics: Flexible Work Schedules, Is College Worth it? And Artificial Intelligence (AI) Flexible Work Schedules. In June of last year (2023) we wrote an article titled “Flexible Work Schedules and the Staffing Industry” where we noted significant surveys of workers (Forbes and Havard Business Review) that indicated the high priority workers were giving to flexibility in working hours. We also referred to an article in SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) that strongly supported flexibility. We also noted that the staffing In ..read more

Introduction In addressing the complex problem of the millions of unemployed Americans with disabilities, it turns out that the Staffing Industry was, and is today, uniquely structured and positioned to play a critically important role. That role is in transitioning many thousands of these otherwise well-qualified and highly motivated people to become productive members of the workforce. More on the critical role of the staffing industry in this mission with its processes, and promising outcomes, will be discussed herein. Background On July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the “Amer ..read more

A January 2024 survey conducted by the American Staffing Association (ASA), found that 39% of employees preferred a hybrid remote work schedule and another 32% preferred fulltime remote. Only 29% preferred a full-time in-office schedule. But the ASA survey asked another seemingly unrelated question about “Burnout”. Since I believe this is the most important issue, “Burnout” will be the major focus of this article. It is interesting that this ASA survey on primarily preferences for remote work versus in-office, would also ask about “Burnout”. Why? Just by having “Burnout” in the same survey sug ..read more

On March 27, 2024, Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) reported during their Executive Forum in Las Vegas, in a keynote address by their chief analyst Barry Asin, that staffing industry revenue was down 15% during 2023. He also noted that the industry usually tracks well with overall GDP growth yet with GDP up overall, the staffing industry, at minus 15%, was obviously an outlier last year. Although this single-year decline is not a trend, SIA forecasts that the staffing industry will continue to decline in 2024 but at a much lower percentage, i.e., 3% annually. In attempting to explain why the 1 ..read more

“The long arm of the law” has been catching up with Gig Platforms, forcing them to come under federal, state, and municipal laws. Over the last few years, much of the legislation has involved the initially “presumed” and increasingly challenged status of Gig workers as Independent Contractors. As “the new kid on the block”, and often operating worldwide via cloud-based, digital platforms, it has been difficult for governments to regulate them. We have written on these platforms and the attempt to regulate them since October 8, 2019, with other articles on October 18, 2020 and February 25, 2021 ..read more

Three respected business forecasting groups agree that 2024 looks good. The Conference Board reported in February that 2024 “started on a strong footing with various indicators of business activity, labor markets, sentiment, and inflation are moving in a favorable direction”. While they had forecast a recession for 2024, they were “upgrading” that forecast and no longer predicting one for this year. Also reporting in February, The National Association of Business Economics (NABE) said that the outlook for this year is brighter than first thought”.  They increased their prediction for over ..read more

Amazon has 9.7 million sellers and 100 million shoppers in the US alone. The eBay has 170 million shoppers every month. Etsy has about 7.47 million sellers. Note: A person or company can operate as more than one seller. Generally, Etsy operates together on one platform. What allows these giants to add stores or sellers and seamlessly give each access to its functionalities like search tools, display space, order information, checkout, payment processing, etc.  is a software tool called an “Application Programming Interface” or API. There are thousands of them customized for many thousands ..read more