Annual Cleaning and Security Labour Market Trends 2023
In the global cleaning and security industries, economic uncertainty continues in the job market.
TEAM Software by WorkWave dove into the data, analysing key metrics globally and comparing them to industry-specific findings*. Use this information to drive strategy, including attracting – and keeping – employees in your workforce.
What are hire rates?
A hire rate is defined as all additions to a company’s payroll examined as a percentage of total employment.
During a nine month period (January-September 2022), the following hire rates were reported across the globe:
- The US experienced a monthly 4.0% hire rate, down 0.3% from January, with an average hire rate of the entire nine-month period settling at 4.2%.
- In the United Kingdom, payrolled employee volumes rose by more than 1.5% over the same nine month period.
- In Australia and New Zealand, employment increased by 2% over the same six month period.
What do these national, industry-agnostic statistics suggest? Whilst comparisons are not 1:1, there is relative consistency, or in some regions, uptick, of hiring and employment rates conveying a gradual return to the active labour market across all industries.
What are quit rates?
A quit rate is defined by voluntary employee separations, excluding retirement or transfers.
When examining a nine month period (January-September 2022), the following quit rates were reported across the globe:
- The US experienced a monthly 2.7% quit rate — down 0.1% from January, with an average quit rate settling at 2.8% over the nine-month period.
- In the United Kingdom, Q3 quits were reported as 365,000 — still nearly 25% higher than pre-pandemic data in Q3 2019. This followed record resignations reported in Q2 2022, which were the highest number of resignations reported in the past two decades.
- In Australia, separation calculations include both voluntary and involuntary statistics (referred to as job mobility, rather than quit rates). The latest report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that 2.1 million people left, or lost, a job over the course of the fiscal year ending February 2022, up 16.67% from the previous year.
Whilst these comparisons aren’t apples to apples, they suggest different trends by region. In the US, quit rates are still higher than pre-pandemic norms (between 2016-19, quit rates averaged 2.2%). In the UK and Australia, separations continue to trend up across all industries.
What’s the job market right now for commercial cleaning and security companies
Labour demand is increasing even as separations remain a consideration – and threat – to contract fulfillment. The 2022 nine-month findings are noticeably higher than the norm, supporting the idea that labour demand is increasing in each industry, despite a lack of overall labour pool increase.
Despite hiring significantly more than the national average, the net sum of workers in the cleaning and security industries aren’t substantially increasing due to the amount of turnover.
In order to maintain an average annual headcount of 100 employees, for example, a security company must hire 108 applicants a year; a cleaning company, 133. The challenge is similar across the globe.
| Country | Date Reported | Unemployed Persons Per Job Posting |
|---|---|---|
| United States | September 2022 | 0.5 |
| United Kingdom | August 2022 | 0.9 |
| Australia | September 2022 | 1.0 |
| New Zealand | September 2022 | 0.4 |
The takeaway?
Recruitment, hiring and onboarding efforts will continue to be a focus of your efforts and strategy.
With inflation cutting into personal savings, there may be an influx of applicants returning to labour markets worldwide. Be ready to attract top talent with streamlined hiring and onboarding processes and have retention strategies already in place to retain them through the first 90 days.
As hiring continues to remain a challenge, reexamine retention strategies for your current workforce, too. The more success you experience with retention, the less investment you’ll need for hiring.
Why data is important
The right data can mean the difference between companies that thrive in any market condition and those that struggle to maintain profit.
That’s why TEAM Software by WorkWave is committed to strong data and reporting, both in our software solutions – so you can stay up to date with real-time visibility into your operations and contracts – and in collecting and providing industry data like our market trends analysis.
To learn more about industry trends, forecasts and applications, access the full data report.
*Key findings are based on TEAM Software by WorkWave US sample data findings