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During the late-1990s the United States experienced rapid economic growth. But while the unemployment rate by 1999 had fallen to its lowest point since the 1960s, the number of contingent and nonstandard workers reached an all-time high.
The term contingent refers to jobs that are of limited or uncertain duration. Nonstandard refers to any work arrangement other than a full-time wage and salary job. Overall, nonstandard jobs are far more likely to be contingent than are regular jobs. Consequently, the two terms are often used interchangeably.1 Contingent and nonstandard work often involve the participation of an employment intermediary. This is an arrangement where an individual works for one firm but is actually employed by another, such as a temporary help agency. While the number of workers employed by employment intermediaries still comprises a relatively small percentage of the workforce, the total share of workers employed in this manner is rising rapidly.
Because of increasing concerns about the growth of the contingent and nonstandard workforces Congress directed the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the Department of Labor in the early 1990s to conduct studies of these groups. The Contingent Work Supplement to the February Current Population Survey began in 1995 and is now conducted every two years. Since BLS has only recently started collecting data on these workers, information about the size and growth of the nonstandard and contingent workforce is very sparse. Nevertheless, other data from the Current Population Survey and data from the National Current Employment Statistics Survey indicate that an increasing portion of American workers are employed in some type of nonstandard work arrangement. Moreover, this increase has come from that part of the nonstandard labor market that has the greatest representation of bad jobs. For example, between 1972 and 1998 the share of workers who are classified as part-time by the Department of Labor rose from 15.7 to approximately 18.0 percent of the workforce.2 The percentage of workers located in the personnel supply service industry increased from .3 percent to 2.4 percent. In contrast, the overall share of workers who are self-employed, one of the better categories of nonstandard work, actually declined from 8.7 to 7.8 percent. While part-time workers, and workers located in the personnel supply industry, do not constitute...