Raise the banner and wave the flag—last week, jobless benefit claims dropped by 34,000, which was enough to bring us to the lowest level we’ve had since July of 2008.
One company that clearly benefited from this news was workforce consultation and human capital provider Volt Information Sciences Inc (NYSE: VOL) whose stock rose 2.12 percent today, according to Money.CNN.com. Another company to gain today was Monster Worldwide Inc (NYSE: MWW) whose stock price rose 2.07 percent. Less impressive but still showing a minor gain was staffing company Kelly Services Inc (NASDAQ: KELYA) with a .05 percent increase today.
Surprisingly, workforce solutions company Manpower Inc (NYSE: MAN) did not see its stock rise with the news. But it was named a “Bull of the Day” by Zacks (“Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day Highlights: Manpower, Vulcan Materials, Vulcan Materials, U.S. Bancorp and BB&T,” December 17, 2010, Zacks Investment Research, zacks.com), which believes “Manpower stands to benefit from growth prospects in under-penetrated staffing markets.”
This is not the first time this year that staffing and job board companies have been in investors’ crosshairs. But this time around, payroll companies like Automatic Data Processing Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADP) and Paychex Inc (NASDAQ: PAYX) didn’t have major gains. ADP actually fell .09 percent and PAYX rose just .23 percent.
Covestor models with exposure to these sectors include: Long Term Value, Focus Value, Speedboat, Micro-Cap Aggressive, Global Clean Energy-Clean Tech.
*All prices courtesy of Yahoo Finance and CNN Money.
