Is the U.S. Turning Into a Nation of Temps? Depends on Where You Live

Worrying over our anemic job creation rate has practically become America's new national pastime since the economic crisis of 2008. While corporate profits have soared, and stock and housing markets have bounced back, we are still faced with a largely jobless recovery. What's worse, a large percentage of the few jobs we've actually managed to create are low-wage, low-skill service jobs, a poor substitute for the higher-wage, mid-skill manufacturing jobs of yore.

New research and analysis by the economic and employment data firm EMSI adds an important new wrinkle to the story. Turns out a substantial share of the jobs created in the United States since the beginning of the recession have actually been temp jobs — not just low-wage and low-skill, but low-wage, low-skill, and temporary. EMSI estimates that there are 765,000 more temp jobs today than there were in 2009. Temp jobs, which make up just two percent of the nation's workforce, have accounted for 15 percent of all job growth over the past four years.