The Job Market's Temp Recovery

Americans' expectations about employment may be shifting away from traditional notions of what a job looks like: a recent Yahoo! HotJobs poll asked respondents whether they were likelier to accept temporary work this year than last--and 75 percent said yes.

And well they might. The U.S. Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent in February, as employers eliminated 36,000 full-time jobs. But it also reported 48,000 new temporary jobs--and since September 2009, 284,000 new temporary jobs have been created.

Traditionally, economists have viewed rises in temp-worker hiring as an early indicator of job-market growth--companies often hire temp workers as a way of starting new projects or increasing production without making a long-term financial commitment to new hires. However, some experts feel that the slow rate of recovery from the current recession means companies will be more cautious than usual about moving from
temporary workers to full-time employees.

"After the last two recessions, a lot of businesses don't want to get caught again," Richard Wahlquist, president of the American Staffing Association, recently told the San Francisco Chronicle.

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