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December 22, 2020

Covid-19 and its economic impact ranked as the top topic in 2020 affecting the staffing industry. Of course, there was a contentious presidential election, legislative changes and more. SIA took a look back at some of the top stories and trends affecting the industry in 2020; here is what we found.

It starts with the pandemic and economic downturn brought by the shutdown orders.

SIA estimated US staffing industry revenue will be down 17% this year compared to 2019, according to the US Staffing Industry Forecast: September 2020 Update. It noted that Covid-19 brought an abrupt end to sustained growth in the US industry. The staffing industry had grown 3% in 2019 and 4% in 2018. Next year does contain some better news with the industry revenue projected to increase by 12%.

Jobs. At the start of the year, there were reports of staffing employees being furloughed and pay cuts taking place as the pandemic began. The lockdowns hit many industries hard, and the US lost 20.8 million jobs in April compared to March, according to seasonally adjusted numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The US has added back 12.3 million jobs since then; however, the pace of increases has slowed as of late.

Economy. Looking at the economy, real gross domestic product fell at an annual rate of 31.4% in the second quarter before rising at an annual rate of 33.4% in the third, according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Industry growth. Only two staffing segments are forecast to post growth in 2020: travel nursing and life sciences.

Travel nursing was the stronger of the two, projected to grow 10% as healthcare organizations struggle to staff operations amid the pandemic. One healthcare staffing executive said he had not seen this number of job orders before, according to an article last month in theStaffing Industry Review Online Showcase. The surge in Covid-19 is raising demand across the country. In a separate story this week, a state official in Tennessee said staffing firms were maxed out.

Covid-19s disruption continues, but few at the start of the year thought things would turn out this way. Though the severity of the situation became more and more apparent. A Feb. 24 news posting pointed to an article by CNN titled Coronavirus is fast becoming an economic pandemic. It quoted an expert that cautioned the spread of the virus into Italy at the time made it a European issue and possibly a global issue that could upset the supply chain for months or years to come. US shutdowns came in mid-March.

For many workers still on the job, work from home became the new normal and words such as Zoom joined everyday vocabulary. Though words such as burnout are also becoming more common in the latter part of the pandemic. One survey cited 76% of workers are experiencing burnout.

Covid-19 wasnt the only thing on peoples minds in 2020. There was the presidential election and a divided country.

Diversity became more important than ever with the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor making headlines along with the Black Lives Matter protests. Staffing client companies had been concerned about diversity even before 2020, but the events of this year focused their attention on it more tightly,Staffing Industry Review magazinereported.

Independent contractor classification. Independent contractor compliance also made headlines. Californias AB 5 law that gets tough on independent contractor misclassification went into effect on Jan. 1.

Human cloud firms such as Uber Technologies Inc. (NYSE: UBER) and Lyft Inc. (NASDAQ: LYFT) faced questions on whether they would have to reclassify their California drivers as employees. Then the states voters approved Proposition 22 in November, allowing the human cloud firms to continue classifying the drivers as independent contractors.

Separately, the US Department of Labor in September proposed a rule aimed at clarifying who is an employee and who is an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act. A group of 24 attorneys general sent a letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia opposing the rule. As of press time, the final rule has not been issued, though the Trump administration is expected to issue it in its final days.

The legislative front had other events as well.

Joint employment. Final rules on joint employment were released this year by both the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board. The Department of Labors rule, announced in January and effective March 16, updated regulations interpreting joint employment status under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The final rule includes a four-factor test for determining FLSA joint-employer status in situations where an employee performs work for one employer that simultaneously benefits another entity or individual.However, a federal judge in September determined the rule is arbitrary and capricious, vacating the departments new test under the law for determining vertical employment when a worker enters a relationship with one company, such as a staffing firm, but is economically dependent on another employer.

The National Labor Relations Board released its final rule covering joint-employer status in February, reversing the 2015 Browning-Ferris ruling by the Obama-era NLRB. The new rule, which went into effect April 27, applies to issues involving the National Labor Relations Act.

Immigration and work visas. H-1B visas were an issue as well.

The Trump administration this year moved forward with long-touted immigration reform including changes to the program for H-1B visas, which are used to bring in highly skilled workers, such as IT and healthcare professionals, on a temporary basis. Although some of the restrictions remain tied up in the court system, denials for H-1B petitions have remained at high levels.

H-1B actions that faced legal backlash included wages, occupations and itineraries. The Department of Labor issued a rule that required employers using H-1B visas to pay the workers the higher of either the prevailing wage or the actual wage paid to other employees with similar experience and qualifications. In addition, the US Department of Homeland Security enacted a regulation to revise the definition of specialty occupation and also make it more difficult for H-1B professionals to conduct work at third-party customer locations. And US Citizenship and Immigration Services instructed officers to stop applying previous policies that required staffing firms to provide detailed itineraries and job duties for H-1B candidates; a bona fide job offer must exist at the time of filing, and benching remains prohibited except in certain limited circumstances.

However, The US Chamber of Commerce and other plaintiffs filed separate actions opposing both the Department of Labor prevailing wage rule and the Department of Homeland Security specialty occupation rule. These cases were combined into one case and a California federal judge on Dec. 1 set aside the rule, The National Law Review reported.

2020 also saw several large deals in the workforce ecosystem. Here are a few examples:

Human cloud platform Grubhub Inc. struck a $7.3 billion deal to be acquired by Just Eat Takeaway.com. Uber struck a $2.65 billion deal to acquire human cloud firm Postmates Inc. Human cloud firm DoorDash Inc. (NYSE: DASH) had an initial public offering.

In February, healthcare staffing firm AMN Healthcare Services Inc. (NYSE: AMN) struck a deal to pay $475 million to acquire Stratus Video, a provider of video language interpretation services for the healthcare industry.

As 2020 ends, Covid-19 is showing a resurgence even as distribution of a vaccine has begun. Vaccinations will, of course, continue in 2021, but the memories of 2020 will not likely fade soon.

Read more:
Covid-19 jolts the industry, economy, election and more; looking back at 2020 - Staffing Industry Analysts

In the 1990s, Chinese-born Eric Yuan had to apply nine times before his US visa was approved here in America, hed go on to become founder and CEO of Zoom. The immigration process has only gotten more restrictive since. While skilled immigrants have been working tirelessly to build the technology that makes it safe for millions of us to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, to find a vaccine, or to provide essential services, the Trump administration has been busily dismantling legal immigration. In more than 400 executive actions, the Trump administration has remade Americas immigration system based on a worldview of immigration as a security and economic threat to Americans, according to the Migration Policy Institute. During the presidents tenure, legal immigration will have fallen by almost half, the National Foundation for American Policy projects.

Yet public support for immigration has never been higher: For the first time in its 55-year history, Gallups immigration poll found that this year, more Americans supported increased immigration over decreased immigration. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans surveyed said that immigration is a good thing for the country. And now the incoming Biden administration has an opportunity if Congress provides support to fix a broken system.

Trumps policies have proven detrimental to American jobs and the economy. Although one of the most demeaning things about being an immigrant is that your personhood is reduced to your economic worth, there is no denying that immigration is an economic net positive, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Foreign-born workers contribute an estimated $2 trillion to the US economy every year about 10 percent of the countrys gross domestic product. Immigrants are twice as likely as US-born Americans to start their own businesses. Immigrants have started more than half of Americas startup companies valued at $1 billion or more, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, and are key members of management or product development teams in more than 80% of those companies.

These firms, Zoom included, often create thousands of jobs, pay taxes, and rejuvenate local economies. In Massachusetts, where 1 in 5 workers is foreign-born, according to the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition, more than half of the Fortune 500 companies based in the state were founded by immigrants or their children think Biogen or The TJX Companies. And in 2019, more than half of the medical and life scientists in the state were foreign-born, as were 40 percent of health aides and 14 percent of nurses. Now, immigrant doctors and scientists are disproportionately represented on the front line fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

The best way to restore order, dignity, and fairness to our immigration system as pledged by the president-elect on the campaign trail is by changing our system to one that sees immigrants as people and not a problem to be managed.

Reform can start by amending the public charge rule originating in the 1880s that discriminates against low-income immigrants, who are essential members of the US workforce. The law doesnt clearly define the term public charge, but its taken to mean people who are an economic burden on the government. Under Trump, the public charge rule was expanded to deny permanent residency to immigrants based on their legal use of government benefits such as food stamps, housing assistance, or Medicaid. In July, a federal judge blocked Trumps new guidelines after doctors, local officials, and advocates said immigrants fears about jeopardizing their immigration status by seeking medical treatment was hampering efforts to contain COVID-19.

In addition, policies around visas allowing US employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations must be reviewed. Denial of new applications for these H-1B visas more than doubled in the first three years of the Trump presidency and continues to climb, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. Facing harsh visa restrictions, American multinational companies offshored tens of thousands of jobs to Canada, China, and India and opened new affiliates there, writes Britta Glennon, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School.

Immigration paperwork must also be streamlined. According to one estimate, if an employer decided to sponsor my green card (which is proof of lawful permanent residency), it would take over 80 years to process due to the current backlog. An estimated 200,000 applicants from India, my native country, could die before they could reach the front of the line.

I worry that immigration reform may be put on the back burner by the new Biden administration. It does not appear as a priority on the transition teams website and the words immigration and immigrants surface rarely, mostly in reference to VP-elect Kamala Harriss immigrant heritage and work in California, in the bios of Cabinet nominees, and just once when discussing the administrations economic policies.

In a pandemic and accompanying economic downturn, rebuilding Americas immigration system cannot wait. Let it start with a vision and framework aligned with economic research that treat immigration not as a burden but as an opportunity for job creation and innovation. President-elect Biden has the chance to undo many of Trumps attacks on immigrants and to build immigration policies that are inclusive and beneficial to both immigrants and US-born Americans.

___________

Bansari Kamdar is a freelance journalist and researcher in Boston who specializes in South Asian political economy, gender, and security issues. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

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Immigration reform must be a priority for the incoming Biden-Harris administration. Heres where to start - The Boston Globe

President-elect Joe Bidens pledge to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants within the first 100 days of his administration is a total rebuke of the hatred, division and racism that personified Donald Trumps presidency and a major victory for our nation and for all New Yorkers.

The promise of seeing Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris take the oath of office is a significant relief for immigration advocates like me, who have been fighting for reform for years. However, we wont let this victory lull us into complacency; we will use this opportunity to push for significant, meaningful immigration reform.

We must unravel the outgoing administrations damage to immigrant communities and transform the broken system to create fair and humane processes for everyone. When all families can fully contribute, we will build a stronger economy and democracy that reflects Americas values.

Now is the time for immediate action and to hold both federal and state lawmakers accountable to their promises of reform and a safer future for all New Yorkers, regardless of their immigration status.

This begins with ensuring Washington acts quickly on time-sensitive issues like providing permanent solutions for people seeking asylum, reuniting 666 children with their parents from whom they were ripped apart at the border, protecting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status program recipients, and reversing harmful visa and Muslim ban policies.

We must also turn this election momentum into advocacy that ensures immigrants are a priority in future COVID-19 relief efforts. Ultimately, this means comprehensive immigration reform passage to provide the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. with a pathway to citizenship something both Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and Biden have pledged to do. These are significant promises and we must work together to ensure they are fulfilled.

At the state level, New York Democrats have expanded their reach, winning the largest Senate majority in history. The voters have spoken, and Democrats in both legislative chambers must put their power to use by creating a safety net for undocumented individuals who were intentionally and wrongly excluded from the direct assistance of the CARES Act.

The state Legislatures freshman class brings newfound diversity to the Capitol and includes many pro-immigrant policy leaders. They must continue to pass state-based legislation to provide immigrants with opportunities and assistance in the absence of or lead up to action in Washington.

New Yorks immigrants make up 31 percent of our essential workforce. Many of these workers are undocumented and left out of state and federal assistance despite their contributions. Immigrants will also play a key role in the ongoing post-pandemic economic recovery efforts; no true recovery can exist without including them.

To do so, state lawmakers must immediately pass vital bills like the Empire State Licensing Act, which would provide all New Yorkers with access to professional licensing or necessary permits to enter the workforce, regardless of immigration status. Gov. Andrew Cuomo must sign the Protect Our Courts Act, which prohibits Immigration and Customs Enforcement from making civil arrests around New York courthouses. Also on the table is the Access to Representation Act, which would create a statutory right to representation for New Yorkers facing deportation who cannot afford a lawyer, among other bills that would benefit the immigrant community and all New Yorkers.

Immigrants are important members of our communities. Our nations ability to respond and recover from the coronavirus pandemic is not possible without them. I urge Cuomo, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to act swiftly for a state recovery and protections that include all New Yorkers.

In the absence of federal leadership, we must lead. We can be better by doing better; its that simple.

Eddie A. Taveras is the New York state immigration director of FWD.us. https://www.fwd.us.

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Commentary: With victory, continue pushing for immigration reform - Times Union

Ruben Navarrette Jr., Opinion columnist Published 4:00 a.m. ET Dec. 8, 2020 | Updated 4:55 p.m. ET Dec. 8, 2020

Biden has made a lot of lofty promises about immigration reform. We'll see if he actually delivers.

SAN DIEGOWhat will President-elect Joe Biden do with regard to the thorny issue of immigration?

As someone who has written about this topic for three decades and who followed closely the missteps, mistakes and misdeeds of the last administration in which Biden served heres my advice:Mr. President-elect, every time you formulate a policy or face a predicament on immigration, ask yourself, What would former President Barack Obama do? Then do the opposite.

Biden is off to an encouraging start with his first Latino Cabinet pick Homeland Security Secretary-nominee Alejandro Mayorkas.The Cuban American, a former U.S. Attorney who was director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration, seems to favor a kinder and gentler approach to immigration

Already, Mayorkas is trying to calm immigrant advocates who worry about the return of Obama-style mass deportations.

He tweeted: When I was very young, the United States provided my family and me a place of refuge. Now, I have been nominated to be the DHS Secretary and oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.

In 2017, Mayorkas told PBSJudy Woodruff that he favored expanding theDeferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program which he developed and shepherded to include more people, based on their age when they came to the United States.

As for Obama, there is a reason the 44th president was heckled by undocumented young people. Theres a reason why immigrant advocates including then-Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., were arrested for protesting outside the White House during the Obama years. And theres a reason why immigration activists picketed outside the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina, during the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

Obama was vexed by immigration. He couldnt get it right. Heres an executive summary of what went wrong:

Obama broke his campaign promise to make immigration reform a top priority.

Vastly expanded the Secure Communities program, which enlisted local and state police to help in the apprehension of undocumented immigrants.

Deported 3 million people in eight yearsand put into foster care tens of thousands of U.S.-born children whose parents got deported.

Refused initially to halt deportations, insisting he wasnt "a king."

Claimed falsely that his administration only deported criminals.

Ordered, in 2014, thousands of Central American refugees to be removed without due process;jailed thousands of others, including infants and toddlers housed in what activists called baby jails; and released a third group into the custody of U.S. relatives only to round them up a little over ayearlater.

Whenever he faced pushback from the left, blamed the heavy-handed approach on Republicans in Congress whom he supposedly needed to please so he could get through a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

Protest at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters on July 17, 2020.(Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

No such bill was ever produced. The only part of the Obama immigration agenda that turned out to be real was the pain that his administration inflicted on immigrant communities.

The one bright spot was DACA, a change in executive policy by the Department of Homeland Security. Undocumented young people brought here as childrencould apply for a two-year work permit and have their deportation deferred temporarily.

The catch: Recipients had to turn themselves into authorities, get photographed and fingerprinted, and hand over their home address.That was a good deal for the authorities, but as we learned when Donald Trump became president and ended DACA, leaving more than 600,000 recipients vulnerable to deportation not so good for "Dreamers."

What a debacle. Its no wonder thatas Obamasvice president, Biden tried to avoid the topic of immigration during his own presidentialcampaign.

In November 2019, Biden was confronted at a town hall in Greenwood, South Carolina. Carlos Rojas, a Latino immigrant advocate, grilled Biden about Obamas immigration record. Rojas was fishing for an assurance from the Democratic candidate for president that, if elected, he would not repeat Obamas mistakes. Biden defensively snapped at Rojas: "You should vote for Trump!

This February as primaries in states with heavy Latino populations loomed Biden finally acknowledged that the Obama administration had bungled its policy toward immigrants and refugees. They made a big mistake, Biden told Univisions Jorge Ramos before the caucuses in Nevada, where 30% of the population is Latino.

We can't win on immigration alone: Latinos helped elect Biden, but Democrats can do better

The president-electhas promised to issue in the first 100 daysmore than a dozen executive orders and policy changes rolling back Trumps immigration policies.He vowed to reinstate DACA, halt construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, stop separating families, end prolonged detentions,restore asylumand curb deportations.He even promised to send Congress a bill to give legal status to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

Dont hold your breath. The same political considerations that tripped up Obama are likely to ensnare Biden.

Obama drove his immigration policy into a ditch by trying to be simultaneously tough and compassionate. He turned out to be much better at the former than he was at the latter.

Now Biden is likely to travel the same road. He cant afford to be seen as soft on border security. If Biden encounters a migrantcrisis like the one that flummoxed Obama in 2014, we can expect him to follow Obamas example and make all the same errors in judgment.

Obama was squeezed between Latinos who wanted legal status for the undocumented and a more lenient approach to deportations, and white working class union members and African Americans who feeling overrun by Latino immigrants and seeing the prospect of legalizing millions of them as economic suicide because it would only increase competition for jobs favored the opposite approach.

Biden will now find himself between the same rock and hard place. Expect him to bring back DACAand call it a day. He may yield to the demand of immigrant activists to strengthen the program and make it permanent, or he couldbe satisfied with just taking DACA back to what it was on the last day of the Obama administration.

Either way, there wont be much else happening on immigration, and Biden will blame his failure to produce anything more on a GOP-controlled Senate led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Meanwhile, deportations will continue at roughly the same pace that theyre happening now, which is an improvement over Obamas deportation juggernaut. And a mass granting of legal status which the right-wing derides as amnesty" will never be mentioned again.

Policy over president: Why activists for police, immigration reform need to focus on policies, not presidents

Thats a far cry from what Biden promised a group of Hispanic supporters in September when he traveled to Kissimmee, Florida, for an event to mark Hispanic Heritage Month. He said that, if elected, he would commence to finally building an immigration system that treats people with dignity and is true to American values.

Thats not likely to happen. The politics of immigration wont allow it to happen. The players change,But the game stays the same.

Ruben Navarrette Jr., a member of the USA TODAYBoard of Contributors, is a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Groupand host of the podcastNavarrette Nation. Follow him on Twitter:@RubenNavarrette

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On immigration, Biden should look to the Obama administration and do the opposite - USA TODAY

But Biden's efforts could be thwarted if migration at the southern border surges next year, as some expect it to, following a spate of hurricanes in Central America, the economic downturn and Trumps departure. And the incoming presidents focus on immigration could end up losing out to other priorities the most pressing of which includes controlling the Covid-19 pandemic, digging the country out of a painful economic recession, restoring relationships with the countries Trump alienated and tackling climate change.

Reversing everything President Trump did to secure our borders, curb asylum abuse and protect American workers isnt only bad policymaking that will trigger a crisis, its a political plank walk, said RJ Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors immigration restrictions. We hope that commonsense and the weight of responsibility for a nation reeling from a pandemic will alter Bidens radical immigration plans once he enters the Oval Office.

The Biden transition did not respond to questions about their immigration agenda.

The incoming president also faces enormous pressure from progressive circles to follow through on his promises to quickly undo Trumps policies and be more welcoming to immigrants than former President Barack Obama, who was dubbed the deporter in chief.

As this pressure has mounted, Biden has placed staffers with immigration policy backgrounds throughout his administration.

For DHS secretary, Biden will nominate Alejandro Mayorkas, the first immigrant and Latino to lead the department. Over at the White House, Pili Tobar, who worked for the Latino Victory Project and the advocacy group Americas Voice, will become deputy communications director. And Julie Chavez Rodriguez, who previously helped run her grandfather Cesar Chavezs foundation, will lead the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

Bidens team will have a few moves they can do right away.

After entering office, Biden is expected to instantly repeal the ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries, halt further funding for the southern border wall and lift a moratorium on foreign workers implemented during the pandemic.

But other steps will take longer.

For instance, Biden wants to raise annual refugee admissions from 15,000 to 125,000 but must first build up the capacity to accept such a swift increase. His team will also take over the arduous campaign to find the families of more than 600 children separated from their parents at the southern border. Other regulatory changes will naturally take time, such as revising the criteria used to turn away or admit asylum seekers.

And even Bidens goal of fully reinstating an Obama-era program that offers work permits and legal protections to so-called Dreamers the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children is expected to face years of court challenges.

Its going to have to be a very thorough undertaking, said Manar Waheed, a senior legislative and advocacy counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union's immigration wing. There are many, many regulations that have to be rescinded, and it cant be undone overnight. And thats just to get back to where we were, not even to move forward.

Immigration advocacy groups, many of which worked to turn out voters for Biden this fall, are now leaning on the Biden administration to act aggressively.

Greisa Martinez, the executive director of United We Dream, is among those pushing for an indefinite moratorium on deportations and detentions of immigrants. Biden has currently only pledged a 100-day pause on deportations. Martinez also wants Biden to allow the return of people the Trump administration deported who still have family in the U.S.

In the first 100 days, we believe he needs to be bold, swift and act without hesitation, she said. Black and Latinx people showed up for real change in November and gave him a real mandate.

The latest news in employment, labor and immigration politics and policy.

Other advocacy groups, such as Movimiento Cosecha, are pushing for Biden to extend legal protections for undocumented immigrants beyond Dreamers and those displaced by war and natural disasters.

We want to see a program that protects anybody, that doesnt exclude anybody due to age or country of origin," said Carlos Rojas Rodriguez, an organizer who confronted Biden on the campaign trail about his immigration record. If youre a person of good moral character, you shouldnt live under the fear of being separated from your family.

Then theres the desire to offer a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally a policy change that would require Congress to act.

Biden has vowed to push Congress to craft an immigration deal, but that will be tough even if Democrats win a narrow majority in the Senate by capturing both Senate seats set for runoff elections in Georgia next month.

In recent years, Congress has repeatedly tried and failed to enact major overhauls to the immigration system. Presidents of both parties, including George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump, have all urged Congress to act to no avail.

Still, Democrats plan to offer a comprehensive immigration bill that Biden can support. Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) is drafting legislation Democrats hope to introduce in January.

There are no magic wands for transforming immigration policy, but what you can change on Day 1 is the atmospherics around immigration, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute. Changing policy is going to take time.

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Biden pledged to undo Trumps immigration policies. It will take time. - POLITICO