Lean and Mean

"The temp industry’s continued growth even in a boom economy was a testament to its success in helping to forge a new cultural consensus about work and workers. Its model of expendable labor became so entrenched, in fact, that it became 'common sense,' leaching into nearly every sector of the economy and allowing the newly renamed 'staffing industry' to become sought-after experts on employment and work force development. Outsourcing, insourcing, offshoring and many other hallmarks of the global economy (including the use of 'adjuncts' in academia, my own corner of the world) owe no small debt to the ideas developed by the temp industry in the last half-century."

Erin Hatton in The New York Times traces the rise of temporary labor since the 1960s.