Focus 231

A disproportionate share of temporary help agency employees consists of young, female, predominantly minority workers, many of them recent or current welfare recipients. In 2001, for example, nearly 60 percent of temporary services workers were women, half of them between the ages of 16 and 34. And whereas the proportion of black and Hispanic workers in traditional employment—around 11 percent—generally reflected their share of the population, blacks and Hispanics accounted for 25 and 18 percent, respectively, of temporary agency employees. In 1990, about 14 percent of women in temporary services supplemented their earnings with meanstested welfare benefits, compared to 3 percent of all women with permanent work and 6 percent of permanent part-time workers. The temporary services industry has become an increasingly important source of low-skilled work, and temporary employment grew five times faster than overall employment between 1972 and 2000. In a number of states, temporary help service firms are registered providers of welfare-to-work services. Directly or indirectly, public policies may be encouraging the growth of temporary help service employment.