3 Temporary workers and COVID‐19: Currents below a calm sea

Abstract

Chapter 3 provides an overview of the context of temporary employment, including long‐term trends, before considering the experience of temporary work during the COVID‐19 crisis and what may be expected in the recovery phase. All of which have important implications for workers, enterprises and economies. The chapter demonstrates that temporary employment has served as a buffer against the shock caused by the pandemic, as it has done in previous crises. Employers have scaled back the use of temporary workers, causing significant gross job loss among this category of workers. At the same time, many permanent employees who lost their jobs have found new opportunities in temporary employment. The net effect is that the share of temporary workers among all employees has remained fairly constant in countries with available annual data, concealing the significant labour market churn.