Another V-Sign of Economic Recovery: Temp Jobs

NY TIMES -- The hiring of temporary workers has surged, suggesting that the nation’s employers might soon take the next step, bringing on permanent workers, if they can just convince themselves that the upturn in the economy will be sustained. Last month 52,000 temps were added, greater than the number of new workers in any other category. Not even health care and government, stalwarts through the long recession, did better. The unemployment rate fell in 36 states in November partly because of the growing use of temps.

As demand rose after the last two recessions, in the early 1990s and in 2001, employers moved more quickly. They added temps for only two or three months before stepping up the hiring of permanent workers. Now temp hiring has risen for four months, the economy is growing, and still corporate managers have been reluctant to shift to hiring permanent workers, relying instead on temps and other casual labor easily shed if demand slows again.

MP: After falling for nineteen consecutive months from January 2008 to July 2009, the number of temporary jobs has now increased in each of the last four months, and the 52,400 increase in November was the largest monthly increase in more than five years (since October 2004).

HT: Erik Babosci