Temp Hires on the Rise

According to the American Staffing Association, the industry employed a daily average of about 2.5 million contract and temporary employees in the fourth quarter of 2008. That represented a drop of almost 20% from the fourth quarter of 2007. The staffing industry is hypercyclical; temp employees are the first to be let go and the first to be re-hired. For this reason, economists sometimes point to the staffing industry as a bellwether for the economy as a whole.

But with signs that the economy might be stirring, temp employment is on the rise. The Post and Courier recently published this piece on area white collar temporary employment agencies doing brisk business of late. (The NYTs put out a similar article a few months ago.) The workers are often new to temp work. They are individuals who have skills and experience but have been laid off from full-time jobs and are willing to take significant pay cuts because jobs are so scarce. The January unemployment figures indicate that at 12.6% South Carolina has the fourth highest unemployment rate in the nation. Those interviewed for the article attribute the rising demand for temporary office staff like receptionists to the fact that businesses are swinging back into gear but remain hesitant to (re)hire full-time employees.

The industry pros interviewed for the article insist that this isn’t a case where businesses are making permanent use of temp employees to keep them off the payroll and avoid paying for insurance and benefits. Whether that’s true or not for white collar temp positions, the practice is not uncommon among businesses using unskilled day laborers. We’ve seen instances where a day laborer has worked for nearly a year on the same jobsite, always as a temporary employee. He never received a raise, and, when the job finished, he was let go with little notice. This is what we mean when we say that day laborers have no job security.