Public Employee Press

The temp workforce

• Temporary workers - with lower pay and no health insurance or retirement benefits - generally cost less than regular employees, and they can be fired at any time.
• Employers of temps shift the cost of health care to the taxpayers, because, without benefits, temps use emergency rooms and Medicaid more.
• Extensive use of temps creates a hard-to-unionize, splintered workforce with multiple employers.
• Contingency workers made up 30 percent of the workforce by 2000. They include agency temps, direct-hire temps, contract workers, independent contractors and on-call and self-employed workers.
• Since 2009, temporary services has been the fastest-growing sector of the economy. The sector added 557,000 jobs - 54 percent of all new jobs-to the economy between June 2009 and October 2011.