Are Weekly Trends Signaling a Cleaning and Security Industry Hiring Recovery?

Musings from the spare bedroom office.

By Jeff Davis, General Manager of Kwantek

As we start to emerge from our months’ long social isolation and eagerly watch as local economies reopen, hiring data are beginning to emerge and paint a picture of a rebound for cleaning and security contractor companies.

One key metric we’ve been keeping an eye on over the past few months is weekly hires by industry. The health of cleaning and security companies lies in their workforce, and as the only pre-hire provider specializing in our industries, we’re in a unique position to aggregate and analyze these data points.

First off, we must recognize our industries have been essential from the first day of social distancing. We know you’ve been working tirelessly over the past few months to keep us safe, and we applaud you and your teams. You’re truly heroes.

Secondly, hiring never stopped. It slowed down, for sure, but you were still interviewing, hiring, and onboarding and we were there to assist you.

Now, onto the data…

Combined Industry Hiring Trend

Hiring seems to be following a ‘U’ curve. The peak of weekly hiring happened in early March, directly before stay-at-home orders were issued. We bottomed out the third week of April representing an approximate 39% drop in weekly hires. That’s big, but it’s not devastating. If you look closer, the hiring numbers in April are similar to December. May had a nice increase, then plateaued due to the holiday weekend.

Cleaning Hiring

Cleaning hiring never had the significant drop similar to other industries, but the recovery has been slower and slightly more sporadic. The Memorial Day holiday certainly had an impact.

Security Hiring

Security hiring has been like the cleaning industry, but with a smoother recovery. Our numbers indicate security hiring is (dare we say!) back to normal numbers in June.

Hiring is an important variable for cleaning and security businesses, but it’s not the only important data point. We’ve moved from record low unemployment, under 2%, to record high unemployment, close to 20%.

• How does this change the hiring process and applicant pool?
• Are we now competing with unemployment?
• Could a COVID second wave impact hiring?

Only time can provide answers to these questions, but initial feedback is hiring is still difficult. As your hiring partner, we’re continuing to monitor these trends, so stay tuned as we continue to provide updates.