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The temporary help industry and the operation of the labor market
Abstract
The temporary help supply (THS) industry is an ideal prism through which to view the labor market. As one of the fastest growing industries in the United States it is an important phenomenon in its own right. As a labor market intermediary which weakens the attachment between employer and employee the industry is indicative of larger changes in the organization of labor relations. Finally, as an industry two thirds of whose employees are female, it captures some of the dynamics of the way in which gender operates in the labor market. The dissertation considers three aspects of the temporary help industry. First, the relationship between the temporary help industry and the increase in female labor force participation rates is considered. A common argument in the literature is that women with family responsibilities choose THS employment because of the flexibility it affords. Using Current Population Survey microdata tapes, this hypothesis is tested and rejected. Instead, I argue that the gender of the worker is a salient feature in the determination of occupational characteristics. This is in contrast to other political economy models which view the labor market as divided into good jobs and bad jobs, with workers then allocated according to their position in a social hierarchy. Second, if growth in the industry is not being driven by employee preferences, what is driving it? Explicitly incorporating conflict into the labor market, I argue that part of the markup, i.e. the difference between what the THS firm pays the worker and what it charges its client firms, is the cost of disciplining a worker who otherwise has little stake in the company's future and therefore might incur productivity problems for the client firm. Finally, I discuss the conditions under which reliance on a temporary help firm is a viable option for employers. Using annual data from County Business Patterns I demonstrate that neither cyclical nor secular variability in demand nor the growth of service employment fully explain the growth of THS employment. Rather, THS employment reflects structural change in the system of labor relations.
Subject Area
Labor economics|Labor relations
Recommended Citation
Lapidus, June Alison, "The temporary help industry and the operation of the labor market" (1990). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9100520.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9100520