The temporary jobs recovery

Comparing "temporary help service" jobs across recoveries


Comparing "temporary help service" jobs to overall service jobs and goods producing jobs (from WSJ)


In the past Democrats have deriding recoveries that produced a lot of new service industry jobs. The media is surprisingly quite about the way that "temporary help service" jobs have exploded by 460,000 since June 2009. But total private sector jobs only increased by 203,000. That means that non-temporary help jobs fell by 257,000 since the recovery started. The BLS defines these jobs this way:

Temporary help services, also referred to as temporary staffing agencies, provide employees, on a contract basis and for a limited time, to clients in need of workers to supplement their labor force.

Take away the "Temporary Help Service" jobs from last month's report and there were only 10 private sector jobs created. There was actually a net loss in jobs of about 1,000 if you are only asking about permanent jobs and "Temporary Help Service" jobs are subtracted from the total. Indeed, in five of the last six months would have seen drops in total employment without the increases in "Temporary Help Service" jobs.