Behind the Rise of Temp Work

Vicki Smith, author of "The Good Temp"

In The Good Temp, Vicki Smith and coauthor Esther B. Neuwirth explain how temp jobs became an entrenched feature of labor markets, helping erode the traditional permanent employment model. Smith, a professor and chair of the sociology department at University of California-Davis, researched mostly lower-wage temporary employment—by far the majority of temp jobs.

Even with its drawbacks, Smith says, temp work already accounts for up to 4 percent of U.S. jobs and will not be shrinking anytime soon. In a chat with U.S. News, she shared secrets of how temp agencies sell themselves and offered ways to subvert the temping system in the hopes of getting a permanent job. Excerpts:

How heavily do Americans rely on temp work? And is it a healthy phenomenon?
The percentage of the workforce in temporary employment is small, somewhere between 2 and 4 percent. It's hard to know if it's healthy. It's a good thing that these jobs are available, because for a lot of people it is the job that they can get.... It's dynamic because people are moving around. That's a healthy thing rather than a situation where the whole job scene is very stagnant, where you have only a few routes available to get permanent jobs.

How stable is the temp market compared with the shaky full-time job market?
Many of the problems that temporary workers experience are shared by low-wage workers in general. A lot of temps have had permanent jobs that are no more permanent or secure. The work conditions are not particularly better. Very often they wouldn't have had health coverage—which is the case with most temporary jobs. So, temp work can look even better because it can be a chance to turn over—to become a permanent worker.

What's the situation with health benefits?
Very few temporary jobs provide health benefits. Having said that, there are many agencies that advertise that they can provide health benefits to their employees, but they are typically unattainable because the temps have to pay for the plans themselves. And when you earn low wages, you can't afford these plans.

Is temp-to-hire just a lure?
Some agencies specifically advertise that they recruit for temp-to-perm jobs. It's a tricky thing because while they may advertise it, the actual rates of turnover to permanent jobs can be low. But there is something real and useful about that market niche: Many companies today prefer to hire temporary workers over hiring permanent workers, because the cost and the risks [of hiring permanent workers] are too high. It's a slightly different temporary employment. They hire temporary workers as their own recruitment strategy—to give possible permanent workers a test run. Companies may not say this explicitly, but we do know that it's one piece of temporary employment.

The basic picture is that employers have gotten cold feet because they don't want to fire employees...because there have been so many lawsuits around the promise of employment. And people get fired and they're unhappy. And this is one way that employers have tried to cut their costs in the courts.

What's the agency's cut?
Agencies charge the hiring company an hourly rate, and the agency gets a percentage of that—and the temp gets the rest. Sometimes the agency will get a bonus fee for a "conversion" [a temp going to regular placement]—kind of a commission. That's interesting because historically when an agency would place a temp there would be one fee and it would be paid by the temporary worker. (It might be something like half of the first month's salary.) But after that point, the temp's wages were the temp's wages.

Now it's different. Now the agency makes a percentage of every hour's wage. So as long as the temp is employed, the agency is making money off of that person. This is one of the things that have fueled the rise of what we call perma-temps (that is, temporary workers who work for very long periods of time at the same company). So there's no financial incentive to make the temps to go around to different jobs.

What is "job lock"?
Job lock is a social problem. People fear leaving a job because they are concerned they will not be able to find a comparable salary and job with benefits. Over time, shrinking numbers of workers are covered by employers for their health benefits. So if you have a job with those benefits, you'll be very reluctant to walk away from that job unless you know you're going to a job that can provide them. This leads people to staying in jobs that they are not so happy with. Temporary work can't, in itself, solve that problem. But it might give people the feeling of assistance they might need to reposition themselves in the job market.

For whom is it hardest to temp?
It's often been said that married women should get temporary jobs because they can then adjust their work schedule around their kids. And there is a lot of truth to that. But, in fact, we know it can be hard to go in and say, "I want a temporary job for these dates," because often it's the employers who are calling the shots on this.

Should people applying avoid giving these kinds of details?
It's a two-way street. Employers like it because if they don't want an employer any more they can let go of that worker—they don't even have to tell the individual to their face. They can just tell the agency and say, "Please do not send this worker back." That's the beauty of the plan for employers. Why do workers have to be brutally honest about their restrictions?

Is there any way to subvert the system?
You can withhold the information. You know that you can only make limited commitments, too. I'm not advocating it, but if I was having trouble getting a job because I was saying, "I can only work until October," I'd probably be inclined not to say that. If employers have no obligation to me as a temporary worker, why am I going to act as if I have to be totally honest and totally committed to them? I think people would end up deciding to withhold information if they thought that it was getting in the way of them getting a job.