A boost in temporary employment typically presages strong full-time hiring, but four years after the Great Recession’s end, temp jobs keep growing briskly as skittish businesses avoid permanent hires in a sluggish, uncertain economic environment.
Since bottoming in August 2009 at 1.75 million, the number of workers provided by staffing agencies has been on a steady upward trend to 2.74 million workers last month, a 57% gain, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. All other nonfarm payroll jobs are up just 4% over that span. Temp jobs as an overall percentage of payrolls is now 2%, near an all-time high.
Staffing industry executives said the increases have come across the board, from secretarial to blue-collar work to professional and technical services.
Sluggish economic growth has made employers reluctant to add full-time staff or step up investment, even though corporations sit on more than $1 trillion in cash. Congress and the Obama administration have lurched from one fiscal crisis to the next, while ObamaCare and other major regulations give employers an incentive to use temporary workers.
Temps Here To Stay
The staffing industry is reaping the benefits.
“The economic policy uncertainty … has undoubtedly played a role” in temp job gains, wrote Steven Berchem in a report for the American Staffing Association. “Uncertainty can be good for the staffing industry.”
Temp jobs comprised one in 10 jobs lost during the Great Recession, “but they have been responsible for more than 16% of net employment gains since the recession ended,” he noted, crediting temping’s growth to “the flexibility factor: employees want it, businesses need it and it’s good for the economy.”
Jonas Prising, president of ManpowerGroup, a Milwaukee-based staffing and consulting company, said although businesses desire the flexibility and “organizational agility” for themselves, that doesn’t always mean all of their temps want such fluidity in their working situations.
“The majority of people would be taking the jobs under whatever contractual conditions,” he said.
Regardless, the employment services industry is expected to grow two-thirds faster than overall employment, according to BLS. It expects 631,000 more temp jobs in 2020 than 2010.
Structural Vs. Sluggish
“All the research that we’ve done (shows) the trends are pointing towards the flexible workforce,” said Jeff Tavangar, CEO at The Armada Group, a Santa Cruz, Calif.-based staffing company.
Yet not everyone sees structural change, just a weak economy.
Alan Gin, an economics professor at University of San Diego, said employers won’t see the need to curtail the hiring of temps until the jobless rate — now 7.3% — gets back to 5%-6%.
Since bottoming in August 2009 at 1.75 million, the number of workers provided by staffing agencies has been on a steady upward trend to 2.74 million workers last month, a 57% gain, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. All other nonfarm payroll jobs are up just 4% over that span. Temp jobs as an overall percentage of payrolls is now 2%, near an all-time high.
Staffing industry executives said the increases have come across the board, from secretarial to blue-collar work to professional and technical services.
Sluggish economic growth has made employers reluctant to add full-time staff or step up investment, even though corporations sit on more than $1 trillion in cash. Congress and the Obama administration have lurched from one fiscal crisis to the next, while ObamaCare and other major regulations give employers an incentive to use temporary workers.
Temps Here To Stay
The staffing industry is reaping the benefits.
“The economic policy uncertainty … has undoubtedly played a role” in temp job gains, wrote Steven Berchem in a report for the American Staffing Association. “Uncertainty can be good for the staffing industry.”
Temp jobs comprised one in 10 jobs lost during the Great Recession, “but they have been responsible for more than 16% of net employment gains since the recession ended,” he noted, crediting temping’s growth to “the flexibility factor: employees want it, businesses need it and it’s good for the economy.”
Jonas Prising, president of ManpowerGroup, a Milwaukee-based staffing and consulting company, said although businesses desire the flexibility and “organizational agility” for themselves, that doesn’t always mean all of their temps want such fluidity in their working situations.
“The majority of people would be taking the jobs under whatever contractual conditions,” he said.
Regardless, the employment services industry is expected to grow two-thirds faster than overall employment, according to BLS. It expects 631,000 more temp jobs in 2020 than 2010.
Structural Vs. Sluggish
“All the research that we’ve done (shows) the trends are pointing towards the flexible workforce,” said Jeff Tavangar, CEO at The Armada Group, a Santa Cruz, Calif.-based staffing company.
Yet not everyone sees structural change, just a weak economy.
Alan Gin, an economics professor at University of San Diego, said employers won’t see the need to curtail the hiring of temps until the jobless rate — now 7.3% — gets back to 5%-6%.
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