nytimes.com
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.
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.
“When a job comes open now, our members fill it with a temp, or they extend a part-timer’s hours, or they bring in a freelancer — and then they
wait to see what will happen next,” said William J. Dennis Jr., director of research for the National Federation of Independent Business.
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
This isn't the best possible news, as full-time employees are being replaced by cheaper temporary workers without benefits.
Still, an increase in temps is an increase in hiring, and hopefully some of these workers will be offered full-time employment once the economy picks
up a little further.
It does show that employers have SOME faith that there will be an upturn in business sometime in the foreseeable future.
But then again, it may be that more and more employers are just finding temp workers cheaper and more easily expendable, especially since they don't
get any benefits or job security.
I know in the universities full-time professors are being replaced by less expensive adjuncts. Adjuncts are only paid for the hours they spend in the
classroom, and are uncompensated for the time they spend preparing for classes, grading papers, composing and grading tests, individual conferencing
with students and parents, counseling, research, etc. etc.
However, the adjuncts, because they are not being paid for all these things, tend not to do them as well or thoroughly, thereby making them less
effective as teachers.