By MICHAEL LUO
NORCROSS, Ga. — Michael Sinclair knows that in a few months, his stint in the marketing department of a health care manufacturing company here north of Atlanta is set to end.
Michael Sinclair, at his home office, prefers his life as an independent contractor to his old corporate position.
Sinclair's short-term assignment with Mölnlycke Health Care has become a full-time job as interim head of marketing.
He has been with the company for only six months, but he is not dismayed. In fact, he actually prefers his life as an independent contractor — constantly being laid off and rehired, sometimes juggling multiple jobs — to his old corporate position.
“I think it’s far less risky than being in a full-time job somewhere and cut at will and left with nothing,” Mr. Sinclair said. “I see this as the way more people will work in the future.”
Economists believe that Mr. Sinclair’s situation has become increasingly common. What is known as “contingent work,” or “flexible” and “alternative” staffing arrangements, has proliferated, although exact figures are hard to come by because of difficulties in tracking such workers. Many people are apparently looking at multiple temporary jobs as the equivalent of a diversified investment portfolio.
The notion that the nature of work is changing — becoming more temporary and project-based, with workers increasingly functioning as free agents and no longer being governed by traditional long-term employer-employee relationships — first gained momentum in the 1990s. But it has acquired new currency in this recession, especially among white-collar job seekers, as they cast about for work of any kind and companies remain cautious about permanent hiring.
In just one snapshot of what is going on, the number of people who describe themselves as self-employed but working less than 35 hours a week because they cannot find full-time work has more than doubled since the recession began, reaching 1.2 million in December 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Economists who study flexible work arrangements believe that the increase has been driven in large part by independent contractors like Mr. Sinclair and other contingent workers, struggling to cobble together whatever work they can find.
As the economy continues its halting recovery and employers’ confidence remains shaky, economists believe that it is likely that the ranks of these kinds of workers will continue to grow.
“To the degree there’s more uncertainty coming out of this recession than in past recessions, we would expect companies to be more cautious about taking on more permanent employees,” said Susan Houseman, senior economist with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, who studies contingent workers. “So they’d be looking for more of these nonstandard employees to hire.”
Some, like Mr. Sinclair, have embraced this lifestyle, influenced by a growing sense of just how precarious traditional employment can be and reveling in the other benefits, like flexibility and diversity.
Others, however, would vastly prefer permanent jobs. They have struggled to deal with the instability, the second-tier status often accorded contractors and other temporary workers and the usual lack of benefits. In most states, they are ineligible for unemployment insurance and worker’s compensation. Indeed, it is not at all clear that the shift to these kinds of arrangements is good for workers.
Christine Reams, 45, spent a dozen years as the director of human resources at a large hospital in Columbus, Ohio, but was laid off in July 2008. After struggling for more than a year to find a permanent job, she landed a contract assignment back at her former employer in September, this time in the information services department. Initially, the position, which pays half of what she used to make, was supposed to last only six weeks, but the hospital has extended her contract several times.
Now past her sixth month, she is grateful for the work, but the uncertainty has weighed on her, so much so that she checked herself into the emergency room recently when her blood pressure soared. Without health benefits, she had fretted over whether she would be extended again.
“It’s not permanent,” she said of the assignment. “So I am not feeling secure.”
Bob Longo, 47, of Green Brook, N.J., was laid off as a divisional sales training manager at Unilever in 2006. Since then, he has worked as an independent contractor, stringing together a relatively steady stream of assignments, often several at once.
But he has also had to deal with serious peaks and valleys, and he is now trying to find a permanent job.
Mr. Longo estimates that he has earned slightly more on an annual basis than he did at Unilever. On the other hand, he no longer has health benefits, a company car, a pension or a 401(k). Though he can use his wife’s health insurance, he says he does not have the stomach anymore for the endless cycle of scrabbling for work every time he comes off a project.
“I have steak days, and I have peanut butter days,” he said. “When times are good, times can be really good. But when times are bad, they can be really lean.”
Federal and state officials have recently stepped up efforts to crack down on companies that have sought to save money by avoiding paying taxes and benefits on behalf of workers they classify as independent contractors who should actually be treated as full-time employees.
The universe of contingent work and alternative employment arrangements is broad. The largest segment appears to be independent contractors, which includes consultants like Mr. Sinclair, as well as freelance writers, nurse practitioners, information technology specialists and myriad other professionals. In 2005, the last time the Bureau of Labor Statistics tried to track these kinds of workers, independent contractors accounted for 7.4 percent of total employment.
There is also a much smaller group whose ranks have been expanding in recent months — workers who draw their paychecks from temporary help agencies. Still others are employed directly by contracting firms, and there are also temporary workers, like seasonal retail hires, brought on directly by companies.
Despite the drawbacks, there are many who have entered this world voluntarily. In Mr. Sinclair’s case, he had been working at a marketing and strategy consulting firm in the Atlanta area but was laid off last year.
After realizing that companies were mostly not hiring but still had short-term work to be done, Mr. Sinclair plunged into selling himself as a consultant. After taking a few months to get started, he found himself juggling a steady stream of part-time projects.
His current position at Mölnlycke Health Care, which makes surgical gloves and other medical products, started out as a short-term assignment but has morphed into a full-time job as the company’s interim head of marketing. The company plans to hire someone permanent but has been busy with other priorities, which is fine with Mr. Sinclair.
If he is offered the position, he said that while he would be tempted, he was not certain he would take it. His experience with his last company — the first time he had been laid off — taught him a lesson.
“I just saw you really can’t rely on a company,” he said. “I think too many people, even in this day, still think you can rely on a company for security.”
He would rather rely on himself.
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