temporary workforce in America increased by 250 percent as compared with an increase in all employment of less than 20 percent (McWhirter 41).
In 1995, the total numbers of such workers was estimated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at 23.2 million, but the true figure may be closer to 30 million because many of the 10.5 million persons classified as self-employed were in reality part-time workers (McDowell A31). Recently, the most rapid rate of increase in the temporary market was not in clerical jobs, where they still account for about 40 percent of the total, but in blue collar jobs, where they account for 23 percent, and in a variety of professional positions, where they accounted for 5.8 percent in 1995 as opposed to 1.4 percent in 1991 (Bianco A5). In the past, the use of temporary workers declined at the end of recessions, but, after the 1989-1992 recession ended, their numbers increased by 11.5 percent between 1993 and 1995 (Bianco A5). McWhirter says that Americans are now living in "the age of the contingent or temporary worker, the consultant and subcontractor, . . . the just-in-time work force--fluid, flexible, disposable" (40).
The first wave of downsizing that hit a number of basic American manufacturing industries in the 1980s displaced disproportionately industrial workers, whose jobs were lost because of plant closings and the relocation of manufacturing to non-union or offshore locations which were intended to lower manufacturing costs and to improve the competitive position of firms in these industries. The downsizing movement spread in the late 1980s and 1990s at all levels, into almost every industry and the non-profit sector. Through acquisition
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