Government Study Finds 5% of Work Force in Temporary Jobs

Up to 6 million Americans, or about 5% of the work force, hold temporary jobs, the Labor Department said Thursday in the first official estimate of the temporary labor force.

The results were well below estimates offered by private analysts. Some had suggested that as much as 30% of 123 million employed Americans were are in “contingent” jobs, or jobs structured to last a limited time.

The results were culled from a survey of about 60,000 households the government uses for its monthly employment report. Special questions were put in the February survey. Researchers found that contingent workers are more than twice as likely as permanent workers to be young and that roughly 60% would prefer a permanent job. The study also found that no more than 65% of temporary workers have health insurance and that relatively few get it from their employers. Contingent workers are concentrated in professional and service occupations. The government has yet to tabulate a breakdown of temporary workers by job category.

But typical examples are those who do seasonal work, such as a ski instructor, an expert who helps a company prepare its taxes or a fruit picker. Others include those called in to complete a specific project for a company. Professionals include teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists. Service occupations include those working as nurse’s aides, janitors, waiters, police and firefighters.

Depending on the definition used by the Labor Department, the proportion of temporary workers ranges from 2.2% to 4.9% of the work force--or from about 2.7 million to 6 million workers.

This study “gives us another piece of information about the characteristics of the labor market that we didn’t have before,” said Tom Nardone, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which conducted the study.