>Doug- You've maintained for a long time that the rise of temp and
>independent contractors was not significant, yet there is some evidence due
>to the divergence between the payroll survey and the "household survey"
>(which is reporting a strong rise in job growth, much of it assumed to be
>self-employment) that new flexibility in hiring structures is playing a new
>role in the economy.
>
>Do you think the household survey numbers are just wrong, or might the
>long-hailed rise of contingent work relationships be becoming a reality?
Most contingent workers - temps and part-timers - would be counted as employed in the payroll survey, so that's not the reason for the discrepancy. The only exception would be the self-employed, who would appear in the HH but not the payroll survey, but the growth in their numbers isn't large enough to explain the difference. (There's no need to assume self-employment - they're a category in the household numbers.) One possibility: an explosion in employment at new businesses that aren't in the payroll survey but would be in the HH survey. But if that were happening in large numbers, tax collections would probably be higher than they are. So, as the BLS recommends, I'd stick with the payroll story as the more accurate one.
Doug