Contingency employment continues to trend up in 2011

Temporary help services are booming in 2011 as companies are beginning to allocate more money to hire new employees. Contingent employment was at an all-time high in 2008, and after a short dip, is expected to be at a similar level by the start of 2012. In 2010, temporary services rose by about 300,000 jobs to 2.21 million, and in 2011 have continued to rise, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Many companies used part-time labor as a recession staffing solution. Being able to employ workers on a short-term basis allowed them to tend to projects while still exercising cautious business practices. Since September 2008, 88 percent of employers have either maintained or increased the size of their temporary staff, according to a December 2010 survey by staffing firm Yoh.

In part, temporary staffing is benefiting from the improvements made in technology. The price of many browser-accessible mobile phones is falling and the services that they provide are rising. In addition to the wide use of cellphones in the business word, video conferencing has allowed many employers to easily communicate with temporary workers who are never present in an office.

It's not only temporary staffing jobs that have risen in 2011. Monthly job gains averaged 179,000 during the first four months of 2011, according to the BLS.

In July, professional and business services continued to trend up and hire new employees, reaching over 34,000 new jobs in one month alone. Overall, professional and business services have increased by 810,000 new jobs since the August 2009 low, the BLS reports.

Companies have the opportunity to tap into talented creative workers on a temporary basis. Many people find benefits in being employed on a project-by-project basis because it encourages them to tackle more jobs at once and diversify their talents. With the integration of technology into our daily lives, being able to manage multiple accounts between employers has become much easier. In the creative industry, the rise of consultant and freelance work has evolved into individuals working strictly on a per-project timeline and developing an individual brand of their own that they can even market to employers.