Podcast: Rise of the Blue-Collar “Permatemp”
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Rosa Ramirez, a 49-year-old Mexican immigrant, waits to find out if she will be assigned a job for the day. (Sally Ryan for ProPublica)
A recent ProPublica analysis found that at least 840,000 temp workers across the U.S. work blue-collar jobs earning them less than $25,000 a year. These aren’t day laborers, ProPublica’s Michael Grabell reports, but regular employees of temp agencies working in the supply chains of some of America’s largest companies, such as Walmart and Nike.
“The rise of the blue-collar permatemp helps explain one of the most troubling aspects of the phlegmatic recovery,” Grabell writes. “Despite a soaring stock market and steady economic growth, many workers are returning to temporary or part-time jobs. This trend is intensifying America’s decades-long rise in income inequality, in which low- and middle-income workers have seen their real wages stagnate or decline. On average, temps earn 25 percent less than permanent workers.”
Grabell joined editor-in-chief Steve Engelberg in our Storage Closet Studio to discuss how the temp sector has ballooned, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the total job growth since 2009; how the temp system insulates companies from many employer responsibilities while pushing workers’ pay below minimum wage; and how some of the country’s biggest retailers have come to rely on (and profit from) this growing work force.
You can read Grabell’s latest report, The Expendables: How the Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting Crushed, and more on temp agencies on our series page. You can also listen to all of ProPublica’s podcasts on iTunes and Stitcher.
Charley James
July 2, 3:29 p.m.
I suspect that the 840,000 temp worker figure is low. While it’s always folly to generalize from personal experience, the children of two couples I know are all working temp blue collar jobs because, despite being university grads, they cannot find work in anything close to their field. One earns $12.10 an hour (with no benefits) working for a company that provides workers to Black & Decker, another earns $13.55 an hour working in a candy factory but not for the candymaker but rather a temp agency.
But it is not just blue collar workers who are forced into taking temp jobs. When an acquaintance was let go from her $103,000 job as a marketing director, the only “full-time” job she found after months of looking was with a company that provides “interim executives” to businesses that laid off people just like my acquaintance. She gets paid an annual rate of $51,000 - again, with no benefits - if she works 52 weeks a year. This isn’t consulting, a typical gig of a laid off exec, but a contract job where she has replaced someone who’d been working full-time. I was told that the agency that placed her has more than 25 former executives doing similar kind of work.
At least she’s working, and in a job close to what she had been doing.
Alissa
July 2, 5:48 p.m.
Charley, I hold a bachelor’s degree, have almost 10 years of experience in my field (almost all before getting the degree) and was lucky to find a job. I make $10.10 per hour plus eight hours of overtime but am a salary employee, so when I work more than 48 (regularly), my hourly pay goes down quickly. Granted I do have medical benefits and vacation time. I pay about $100 a month for the medical benefits but I can’t afford to actually seek medical care. I could probably swing a co-pay but not the final bill. I also have some measure of job stability compared to those who work for temp agencies, so I am guaranteed to be able to continue living paycheck to paycheck, as long as nothing unforeseen happens. We’re all in the same boat here, except a few at the top and the corporations that control everything, including our soul
