This article was originally published by City Bureau, a nonprofit civic media organization based on the south side.
Temp jobs are on the rise. Employers have increasingly turned to temp workers because of the flexibility a temporary workforce provides, meaning companies can ramp up or scale down their workforce as needed. So far this year, the industry has employed an average of more than three million people nationwide—already surpassing 2021 figures, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The trend holds in Illinois. Last year, the number of temp workers in the state rose by more than 10 percent from 2020 to nearly 170,000 workers. While those figures include office workers, the majority of temp jobs in the state are in industrial facilities. The jobs are filled by staffing agencies, which are concentrated in Cook County and the surrounding collar counties, according to a City Bureau analysis of Illinois Department of Labor staffing agency registration data.
Chicago-area worker advocates said many of the temp workers they interact with have complained about wage theft, retaliation, and workplace safety issues. They are not alone. Nearly a quarter of temp workers interviewed as part of a national survey published earlier this year said they’ve experienced wage theft, meaning they were paid less than the minimum wage, not paid overtime rates, or not paid for all the hours worked. Nearly 20 percent said they hadn’t received safety training, and the majority of...
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