Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Mark Marcon with Robert W. Baird.
Mark Marcon - Robert W. Baird & Co.
I was wondering, with regards to France, what do you think led to, it went pretty much as you projected, but the pace of the deceleration was interesting but it looks like you’re not anticipating it’s going to decelerate any further. What gives you the confidence that things will stabilize here, given some of the macro headwinds that are out there?
Jeffrey A. Joerres
That’s a good question, Mark. I will take a little bit of it and then I think Mike can maybe add a little color to it.
A couple of things is that we have some insight into the first two weeks of July and what was happening at the end of June and any time you’re doing some type of forward projection, as we are for the third quarter, in an economic condition that could be a little bit more slippery or may not as slippery, without knowing those things what we’ve done is said, ?We’ve got three weeks of data, we’ve got a lot of information on the ground. What’s been happening in those three weeks? Is it getting worse, better the same??
And what we’ve really been seeing is kind of more of the same. And when we dig into the client side, much of the industrial client, construction client, I’m not saying all of that has drained out because clearly it hasn’t, but a lot of that on the fringe has drained out. So from a current environment looking forward, that’s why we would get some level of comfort with that. Clearly, I think underlining your question is correct.
And that is something else could fall over there and consumer spending right now is at a pretty long-time low within France, which is a big part of the economy and therefore some other things could happen. But we based it basically on the last three weeks and talking to clients and talking to our staff.
Michael J. Van Handel
Maybe just add a little more color on the trends during the month. Clearly we saw a step down in the demand in May. It was a little unclear at the time how much it had to do with the timing of holidays, which May is a big holiday month in France. But then clearly June looked a lot like May, both months being down between 7.5%-8% revenue year-over-year.
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