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Historically, a rise in temporary employment has been a reliable short term leading indicator of economic recovery. It means that there is increasing work but just beginning to outgrow existing employment levels.

If Demosthenes' parents' business continues to thrive it will mean good things on the job front fairly soon. (assuming no intervening economic disruptions, of course, not a real safe assumption...)

Historically, a rise in temporary employment has been a reliable short term leading indicator of economic recovery. It means that there is increasing work but just beginning to outgrow existing employment levels. If Demosthenes' parents' business continues to thrive it will mean good things on the job front fairly soon. (assuming no intervening economic disruptions, of course, not a real safe assumption...)

You are right about the concept, but that is not what is happening. Demosthenes parents are an anolmaty(sic). The overall pattern of "temporary work", eg. EDS, Compuware, Kelly Services, Perot, and other temporary contract services are still laying off by the tens of thousands.

December was a very poor and worse month for "temporaries".

you guys are missing something, it isn't just the family business that's doing well.

The national retail chain I work for is also up double digits in gross profits over last year. There are a lot of companies in this country who failed to meet PROJECTED earnings, and that's being construed as BAD news. Ignore the fact that their profit margin was only 12% instead of 15% like they promised wall street.

by comparison, anything that isnt a tech boom, no matter how profitable, will appear to people to be success, but not "real" success....you know, what is the gauge anymopre for a healthy economy? Whose opinion do you trust?

One other thing...the temp industry has never taken jobs away from perm employees, and only in extremely rares cases has it prevented an employer from hiring perms over temps. Temps are hired to fill production shortages, and often become perm labor after a probationary period. In some small factories, temps are used exclusively to remove the burden of payroll and tax responsibility from the management, who is opften times too small to handle it all.