Inside Job Numbers: Temporary Jobs Count

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

Inside Job Numbers: Temporary Jobs Count

Something about jobs numbers that no one ever talks about, that is, assuming they're even aware of this.

Temporary jobs count!

Democrats play the role of Republicans in this debate today. Just as they talk about Obama's record breaking stock market as evidence of his prowess in managing the recovery, so too do they cite his job numbers. So much cheerleading, they try to quash any analysis of the numbers. But they should because they're missing something really distorted about the recovery: temporary jobs count. The lesson we lose when we ignore this aspect of job numbers (more important than underemployment IMO) is the disdain corporations have for labor. Specifically, they go to great lengths to deny workers what labor fought for 100 years ago: a living wage and benefits. What happened to those $25/hr jobs? Why are workers making $14/hr? Are employers really not willing to pay that wage? Actually, those $14 jobs are in fact $25/hr paid by the employer. The difference ($11) being paid directly to the staffing agency.

If only Democrats could put down their pom poms and talk about temporary jobs as a symptom of something terribly wrong rather than, as MSM portrays it, a positive economic indicator, they can expose the "free market" gig economic policies of conservatives.

But they (Democrats) can't, because it's a football game, a their side is winning right now.

[whatthehey]

1. Sure they count. Why shouldn't they? They actually declined slightly this month BTW.

The twenty five year trend pretty much matches total employment though; steady gains when overall jobs rise and drops when overall jobs drop.

Other interesting points:

Temp workers are about 2% of the labor force (a touch under now), same as they were in 2000.

Temp workers are NOT counted as manufacturing sector workers even though about 1/3 work in production (temp workers aren't in any other sector either, they have their own).

About 70% of temps are eventually hired by one of their temporary employers (the obverse stat often quoted that only 6-7% of temp jobs leads to a job offer is not a refutation of this, as it looks at discrete assignments not temp workers. The whole point of temp work assumes multiple assignments are the norm).