When Execs Go Temp

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Willie Wingfield is working as hard as he can. He advises six Omaha, Neb., companies on their IT operations, evaluating and replacing their business applications. It's challenging, fast paced--and fleeting. Laid off in 2002, Wingfield, 49, has so far been unable to land another permanent spot and instead takes jobs through a temporary-services firm, usually for one-to-three-month projects. "I don't have a strong sense of security," he says. "As long as I can continue securing clients and billing enough to pay for myself, I'm there. But if the economy turns bad, the company may not be able to keep me on."

Temp work is no longer just about the assembly line or order entry. More and more highly skilled professionals--Wingfield has an M.B.A. and 23 years of experience--are turning to temp agencies while they struggle with a tough labor market. These accomplished workers--lawyers, accountants, engineers, biochemists--make up the fastest-growing segment of the temporary work force and account for as much as a third of the business of large temp firms. That's helped lift temp agencies, which tend to do well in a recovering economy, as companies use them to dip a toe into the hiring pool. Since April 2003, the temporary-services industry has gained 212,000 jobs, accounting for nearly one-third the total growth in payroll numbers.

The temp trend may be here to stay. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the staffing industry will add 1.8 million new jobs between 2002 and 2012, a 54% increase, with professional jobs growing 68%. Along with outsourcing and productivity-improving software, the rise in temporary hiring is one of the big structural shifts redefining the job market, according to a paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. By relying more on temps and contract workers in good times and bad, the report says, "all else equal, this approach yields a smaller permanent work force, more temporary workers and more permanent layoffs." The temp-services industry calls this "strategic staffing"--keeping a core group of full-timers while adding and subtracting temporary and contract workers as needed. Employees call it a new career path--or a raw deal that deprives them of job benefits and security. Either way, more workers are going to have to get used to it.