Temporary work or temporary employment (also called gigs) refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time, based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes called "contractual", "seasonal", "interim", "casual staff", "outsourcing", and "freelance"; the terms may also be shortened to "temps". In some instances, temporary, highly skilled professionals (particularly in the white-collar worker fields, such as human resources, research and development, engineering, and accounting) refer to themselves as consultants. Increasingly, executive-level positions (e.g., CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO, CSO) are also filled with interim executives or fractional executives. Temporary work is different from secondment, which involves temporarily assigning a member of one organization to another. In this case, the employee typically retains their salary and other employment rights from their primary organization. Still, they work closely with other organizations to provide training and share experiences. Temporary workers may work full-time or part-time depending on the individual situation. In some instances, temporary workers receive benefits (such as health insurance), but usually benefits are only given to permanent employees as a cost-cutting measure by the employer to save money. Not all temporary employees find jobs through a temporary employment agency. With the rise of the Internet and gig economy (a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs), many workers are now finding short-term jobs through freelance marketplaces: a situation that brings into being a global market for work. A temporary work agency, temp agency or temporary staffing firm finds and retains workers. Other companies in need of short-term workers contract with the temporary work agency to send temporary workers, or temps, on assignments to work at the other companies. Temporary employees are also used in cyclical work, requiring frequent staffing adjustments.
History The staffing industry in the United States began after World War II with small agencies in urban areas employing housewives for part-time work as office workers. Over the years, the advantages of having workers who could be hired and laid off on short notice and were exempt from paperwork and regulatory requirements led to a gradual but substantial increase in the number of temporary workers, with over 3.5 million employed in the United States by 2000. There has been a paradigm shift since the 1940s in how firms utilize temporary workers. Throughout the Fordist era, temporary workers constituted a relatively small share of the total labor force in North America. Typically, temporary workers were white women in pink-collar, clerical positions who provided companies with a stopgap solution for permanent workers needing a leave of absence for vacation or illness. In contrast, in the Post-Fordist period, characterized by neoliberalism, deindustrialization and the dismantling of the welfare state, these understandings of temporary labor began to shift. In this paradigm, the idea of the temporary worker as a stopgap solution to permanent labor became an entirely normative employment alternative to permanent work. Therefore, temporary workers no longer represented a substitute for permanent workers on leave but instead occupied semi-permanent, precarious positions, routinely subject to elimination due to fluctuations in the company's product. In today's temporary labor force, both people and positions have become temporary, and temporary agencies use temporary workers systematically and plan rather than on an impromptu basis. Temporary employment has become more prevalent in America due to the rise of the Internet and the gig economy. The "gig economy" is a labor market characterized by short-term contracts and freelance work rather than permanent jobs. It is a common misconception that participation in the gig economy is a relatively new method of employment. However, finding work in the gig economy is similar to the employment style before the Industrial Revolution. It is the "one-person, one-career model" that society is accustomed to, and the gig economy is disrupting a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, it was common for one person to take on multiple temporary jobs to piece together livable earnings.
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