Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions).
And our first question is from the line of Tobey Sommer with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please go ahead.
Tobey Sommer
Thank you. I wanted to ask a question about – if you could just refresh us on the normal seasonality that you would experience in terms of demand on the travel nurse side, as we work our way through the year?
Susan Nowakowski
Sure Tobey. Typically, first you end the year at a relatively low point, because a lot of hospitals are dealing with budgetary concerns and trying to themselves plan for what the upcoming year is going to look like. So you typically see a fall off at the latter part of December and then start to build again in January and February and that’s very inline with the trends that we saw this year. I think we draft kind of early in January, and as I mentioned, the positive news is we have seen a very nice recovery in our orders over the last month to the tune almost a 20% increase from January to February. We then expect to see a continued building into February and March, although, traveler count itself will often fall a little bit in the second quarter just because the number of people ending at April is pretty significant. We’re actually feeling pretty positive about our second quarter and our April traveler count. So it remains to be seen whether that normal trend will happen or whether the build up in orders we see will allow us to control beyond that.
The biggest typical seasonal trend is to see the orders building in the summer for your fall placements and if you recall, that's what we didn't see last year. We would normally expect some of the key states such as California to have increased needs going in to August, September, and October. And usually second to third quarter would be your largest pickup in your placement volume and the number of travelers working.
So, we are assuming a similar trend to that this year. You can see based on our guidance that we've been cautious about the level at which that demand will pick up throughout the year. But, actually based on some of the recent news we’ve heard from some of the hospitals that we're reporting, they are looking at admission growth of anywhere from 0.5% to 2% for the year. So, I guess, its a little more confidence that we might see those normal seasonal trends resume.
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