Faint Life Signs: Temp Work Rising

If you work in construction or the information industry be grateful you still have a job, according to recently released data by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But if you’re looking for jobs across many fields, a growing trend seems to be building in your favor: temp work.

Construction employment fell by 64,000 in February, about in line with the average monthly job loss over the prior six months. Since December 2007, employment in construction has fallen by 1.9 million. Sales of new homes have dipped in recent weeks, according to media reports.

Employment in the information industry dropped by 18,000 in February. Since December 2007, job losses in information have totaled 297,000. Many of the job losses in this sector have come from the print industry, where layoffs recently leveled off.

Employment in manufacturing was essentially unchanged in February; retail trade was also unchanged in February, after a sizable increase in January. Media reports say the demand for durable goods – washers, dryers, ranges and other “big ticket” items – has seen a significant rise in recent weeks.


In February, temporary help services added 48,000 jobs. Since reaching a low point in September 2009, temporary help services has risen by 284,000. What seems to be a trend is companies hiring temp workers who may earn full-time status if demand increases and/or existing staffers leave.

Specifically, temp jobs are available in public and private sectors at nearly full-time hours but with reduced or no benefits. This approach offers a “foot-in-the-door” for the unemployed or career changers; it provides employers with a means to fill work gaps and review the available pool of job candidates. It's a win-win for workers and employers.

For now, the healthiest job growth areas of the U.S. economy continue to be in government, health care and education – the strongest areas since the Great Recession began in December 2007.

But there are some dark clouds on the education front, especially in New Jersey, where public school districts may be forced to lay off thousands because of drastic cuts in state aid proposed by Gov. Chris Christie. The Garden State, which has the highest tax rate in America, is heavily in debt and unable to meet financial obligations in many areas, including pension funding for state employees.

In February, the U.S. number of unemployed persons, at 14.9 million, was essentially unchanged, and the unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was 6.1 million in February and has been about that level since December. About four in 10 unemployed persons have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more.

State-by-state unemployment largely deepened last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Virginia dropped 32,000 jobs in February alone, California lost 20,000, and Michigan and Pennsylvania each shed 16,000 jobs.

The ranks of the long-term unemployed, especially those in the information industry, will likely swell in Hawaii, according to a report by Rachel Kaufman at MediaJobsDaily.

In a filing with Hawaii's Department of Labor, the owner of The Honolulu Star-Bulletin said the newspaper will be laying off half of its 300 employees as it pursues its takeover of the Honolulu Advertiser, the Advertiser reports. Oahu Publications said it would cut those 150 jobs whether or not the Bulletin is sold or merged with the Advertiser. Oahu Publications, owner of the Bulletin, is buying rival Honolulu Advertiser from Gannett Co., Inc., owner of newspapers, television stations and Web sites. Gannett has sent layoff notices to all 600 Advertiser employees, but it's unclear how many of those employees would be rehired when the sale completes.

Hawaii, President Obama’s onetime home, is far from a paradise of jobs. So these laid-off newspaper employees might have to relocate to mainland America to look for hard-to-find work, especially if they’re journalists.

The newspaper industry, because of the recession and the Internet, is undergoing dramatic changes. 2009 was the worst year the newspaper business has seen in decades, according to figures released by the Newspaper Association of America.
Print advertising revenue fell 27.2 percent, or more than $10 billion, from 2008 – which was, at the time, the industry’s worst year since the Depression in the 1930s, writes Richard Perez-Pena, blogging for The New York Time's Media Decoder.

From its peak in 2005, newspaper ad revenue dropped 44.2 percent, from more than $49.4 billion to less than $27.6 billion last year. The last time advertisers spent less on newspapers was in 1986.

What does all this mean?

We’ve got a long way to go before the U.S. economy shows more than faint signs of a pulse after nearly 27 months of recession that has left many of us shaken and stirred.

As for me, I practice what I preach at writenowworks.com.