Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by michaelbuckbee 2783 days ago
Anytime the issue of millenials and jobs comes up, I think you have to talk about what the structural differences in the economy and business world are now:

"Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in the building, from the cleaners to the security guards to the bartenders, was a direct hire, each worker on the same pay scale and enjoying the same benefits as everyone else. Today, they’re almost all indirect hires, employees of random, anonymous contracting companies: Laundry Inc., Rent-A-Guard Inc., Watery Margarita Inc. In 2015, the Government Accountability Office estimated that 40 percent of American workers were employed under some sort of “contingent” arrangement like this—from barbers to midwives to nuclear waste inspectors to symphony cellists. Since the downturn, the industry that has added the most jobs is not tech or retail or nursing. It is “temporary help services”—all the small, no-brand contractors who recruit workers and rent them out to bigger companies."

From the fantastic https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millenn...

2 comments

Doesn't this mean that middle-men are just being inserted who are absorbing some of the productivity (earnings) of the worker?

It seems like this would only make economic sense if the end company isn't using them on a regular basis, so overall efficiency goes up by multiplexing an employee out to multiple companies as needed. It seems implied by "Rent-A-Guard", but I'm musing out-loud. I haven't had a chance to read your article yet.

> Doesn't this mean that middle-men are just being inserted who are absorbing some of the productivity (earnings) of the worker?

Essentially, yes.

Ugh I hate Watery Margarita Inc!
They're as bad as Heady Pours LLC