Debt Collection Industry Employers Add Jobs to U.S. Economy in Second Quarter

Even as the overall economy added 117,000 jobs in July, dialing back the official U.S. unemployment rate to 9.1 percent, nobody’s grandmother is ready to whip out the fancy cashews instead of that dish of plain old mixed nuts when the company arrives. On the heels of an acrimonious debt ceiling mêlée in Congress, S&P’s historic downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating, and last Thursday’s 512 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average—the biggest one day drop since December 2008—lots and lots of peanuts appear to be in America’s future.

But the news isn’t entirely distasteful.  Data from insideARM’s ARM Barometer, a quarterly survey of collection agencies, debt buyers, collection law firms, and credit grantors showed that many ARM companies in the outsourced business services sector of the U.S. economy added jobs in the second quarter of 2011.