New Institute Survey on Flexible Staffing Arrangements

Survey on Flexible Staffing ArrangementsEmployers' use of temporary, part-time, and contract employment is widespread and, available evidence suggests, growing.Many regard this development as troubling, pointing out that workers in these arrangements often receive low wages, few benefits, and little job security.Others argue that employers' use of so-called flexible staffing arrangements potentially benefits employees as well as employers.Little information is available to inform the debate over the costs and benefits of flexible staffing arrangements.The February 1995 Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS) on contingent and alternative work arrangements (repeated in February 1997) represented a first attempt in official statistics to provide a comprehensive picture of the number of workers in these arrangements.However, our understanding of which employers use these arrangements, why they use them, and why they may have been increasing their use in recent years is incomplete.To help bridge this information gap, the Upjohn Institute sponsored a nationwide telephone survey of employers on their use of five flexible staffing arrangements: temporary agency workers, short-term hires, regular part-time workers, on-call workers, and contract workers.We surveyed a stratified random sample of 550 establishments in the United States with five or more employees.This article highlights some findings from our survey.