Marketplace - The role of temp work in this economy

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Cautious employers are hiring more temporary workers, according to the Fed’s latest Beige Book. It's sort of a half-step toward creating permanent roles. The good news is temp jobs can be a leading indicator for overall job market strength. But contract work lacks the stability and benefits of full-time employment. Also in this episode: Kai visits a sprawling electronics street market and a tech startup in Vietnam, jet fuel shortages put Europe on edge, and we check in with a hog and soybean farmer in Illinois.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

On the program today, it's a labor market economy gang. We just live in it. That is true here, and it is true globally. From American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizzdahl. It is Thursday. Today, this one is the 16th of April good, as it always is, to have you along, everybody.

Our spin of the roulette wheel of business and economic news today has bounced past inflation and equities and supply chains and artificial intelligence, and landed firmly in that slot labeled labor market. It is, this labor market, as you've heard here at time or two, a bit confounding. Low-hire, low-fire, yes, but also holding up remarkably well, given everything. And we offer some insight today into how and why. The most recent Bayes Book, the Federal Reserve's periodic update on economic conditions on the ground for businesses around the country, it contains the word uncertainty 59 times. The war in the Middle East, obviously, being the most approximate cause and weighing on long-term decisions like, oh, hiring new workers.

And perhaps related, several regions in this economy have seen an uptick in the hiring of temporary and contract workers. Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino gets us going. A lot of companies had just been finding their footing after the last shock of tariffs, says Holly Wade at the National Federation of Independent Business. That initial panic and stress last year was more moderated as time went on and they were able to figure out how this was all impacting them. And then came the war with Iran, rising energy costs and questions about how consumers will respond. So they're holding on to their dollars, not investing as much in their business,

NFIB's most recent survey of small business owners found they're pulling back on capital spending plans at rates not seen since the Great Recession. Aaron Tarasas is an economist with HR platform gusto. They're not necessarily willing to make a full-time commitment to hire an employee, but they sense that their customers want something from them. That's often when employers look for temporary help, says Noah Yosef, chief economist at the American Staffing Association. What we're seeing is that staffing services is being looked to as a way not only to test the labor market, but also to backfill open roles that require a person at that moment. Federal data showed temp staffing jobs have been inching up in the last six months after falling dramatically over the previous four years. Yosef says historically, these jobs have been a leading indicator for the broader labor market, falling at the beginning of downturns, rising as hiring conditions begin to improve. Staffing employment offers that sweet spot before employers

start to feel confident again about making those large-scale investments in headcount. But whether companies will follow the usual pattern this time is especially unclear, says David Weil, a professor of labor studies at Brandeis University. I think there is also an aspect with AI becoming so much more of a factor in how businesses are deciding how to out. allocate work. The Bejibook report found AI had not yet significantly affected staffing levels, though some businesses reported productivity gains had enabled them to delay or reduce staffing. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino for Marketplace. The uncertainty about whether temp work is temporary or here to stay is being felt by no group

more acutely than people who are looking for jobs. Marketplace's Carla Javier made some calls to get some insight? When Eliana Goldstein first started coaching mid-career in senior professionals navigating job transitions in 2019, she says they weren't rushing. They were intentional, strategic, and felt like they could take risks. Now we're definitely finding more people who don't as much have the luxury of time and are feeling like, you know, either they're unemployed or were recently laid off or they're worried about the stability of their own company and really trying to future plan and figure out what's next. Temporary and contract work, she tells them, could be a bridge to future opportunities.

Though these days, she says it feels like less of a guarantee that a contract will turn into a full-time role. Career and leadership coach Phoebe Gavin says there are other perks job seekers can get out of these gigs, though, even if they're not permanent. Obviously, the biggest benefit is that it brings an income. And if you are between opportunities and you either weren't awarded or are outside of your severance period, you just need to pay the bills. Temp gigs, Gavin says, can also expand job seekers networks and make them stronger candidates. You have recent experience where you have driven results, where your skills are still sharp. Especially important for candidates who have been looking for a while now.

For all the potential perks, Andrew Stettner at the National Employment Law Project says workers still need to protect themselves in this tight labor market. He says temp workers need written contracts and freelancers must make sure to pay the appropriate taxes. Important advice, because Stettner says this kind of work may become more common. We have seen the gigification of the economy go into further and further more sectors, you know, and it's one that is growing. Not taking over the economy, he says, but still, growing. I'm Carla Javier from Marketplace. Wall Street on this Thursday, if you bought Allbirds yesterday, the shoe company that's pivoting to artificial intelligence and saw a 582% bump in its share price, first of all, why? Second of all, shares down 36% today. I still don't get that spike. More to the point, though, you know what happens when the major indices go up after hitting a record high, right? Yeah, I know you do. We will have the details when we do the numbers.

There are times in the news cycle, especially a news cycle like this one, when it's really good to back very slowly away from the headlines and get a little ground truth from some of the people actually living and working and trying to get by in this economy. For us today, that person is Brian Duncan. He grows hogs and soybeans on his farm in Illinois. Mr. Duncan, good to have you back on the program, sir. Well, thanks for having me back. Kai. Good to talk to you. I will give you the easy question first, as I usually do. How are things on the farm? Well, right now I'd say the only thing certain is uncertainty. We're watching markets, some disruption, but the livestock complex is showing some profitability, which is a nice change of pace. And so I'd say it's a mixed bag. But we're upright and able to take nourishment. So that's a good thing. There you go. I hear that. Let me ask you a couple of very specific sort of infrastructure kinds of things.

Livestock Complex, you said, is doing okay. I do wonder, though, about getting your product to market, transportation, fuel costs, all of those things. Are they biting you? No, no, the ripple effect is certainly going to be felt. I mean, when you see diesel go up a dollar a gallon, that's obviously going to affect the cost of transportation, not only my products to market, but distributed throughout the food chain. and I worry about then the ultimate impact that'll have on the consumer's pocketbook and, you know, how they'll shop, where they'll reach at the protein counter.

You know, I don't often turn interviews this way when I'm talking to farmers and folks who actually make stuff in this economy, but you are a consumer too. What are you doing when you go to the store? We're fortunate. We harvest some of our own animals, but so that helps. But actually today I was at the store looking for cheaper cuts of meat. And I'm biased, but pork is a huge bargain right now. Fortunately, our kids are raised and grown, so it's my wife and I.

And our consumables aren't what they once were when we were a large family. Yeah, I hear that. Okay, back to specifics. last time we talked, which was a year-ish ago or so, maybe just a little short of a year, you started then, the way you started today about uncertainty. And I guess I wonder what a year of trade policy uncertainty does to a guy. Makes it hard to plan long term. And as we saw the Supreme Court strike down the tariffs, it makes us wonder where we go from here.

a USTR ambassador Jameson Greer spoke, I believe it was a week ago and said trade was now going to be viewed through the lens of a national security strategy. I don't know what that means. I really don't. And is that fungible? Does that change from one day to the next? So I'm just not sure where we go from here. Do you feel that the folks making trade policy are listening to you? I mean, we should say here, you're not part of the Farm Bureau anymore.

You're not leading that Farm Bureau. But you're still, I mean, you got some oomph. And I imagine you could get Ambassador Greer on the phone if you wanted to. No, you give me way more credit. I'm a hog farmer from Ogle County, Illinois. I am a member of the Farm Bureau still. You know, I think you've got competing visions. And again, this whole idea of national security strategy, obviously, we've

want a secure country. But how that's tied to trade and what that looks like day after day, I'm not sure. But, you know, it's a frustrating time. Kai, I think as we look at trade, we've got to, we need to focus on what we can do domestically. You know, farmers get, especially lately with the challenges you all have been having in light of the president's trade policies and then again in his first term, you guys get a lot of press, relatively speaking, but do you get a lot of love, if that makes any sense? You know what I mean? Well, I guess it depends on your perspective.

I mean, there has been some emergency funding that's gone out, and that's appreciated by agriculture. But, Kai, I think I've told you this. Every time we talk, we would much rather get our dollars from the marketplace than from the mailbox. You don't thrive from one emergency bailout to the next. You thrive by building markets and then grow. growing those markets and expanding them.

And I'm just not sure if that is completely understood at this point in time. You heard him say it. He is, as of now, a simple hog and soybean farmer in Illinois. Mr. Duncan, thanks for your time, sir. I really appreciate it. Hi, it's always great to talk to you. Thank you. It has been, by my count, six weeks and five days since the United States and Israel started bombing Iran.

It has been six weeks and three days that the Strait of Hormuz has been close. Still closed, just for the record. And as of today, the head of the International Energy Agency told the Associated Press today, Europe has maybe six weeks or so. That's a quote of jet fuel left. You know, sometimes six weeks seems like forever. And sometimes six weeks is the relative blink of an eye. And with no clear indication that the strait's going to open anytime soon,

what time frame for jet fuel do you think we're talking about? Marketplace of Samantha Fields is on that story. Before Charles Duncan flew to London from Boston for a business trip this week, he wanted to be sure he'd be able to get home. As this trip came together, I was monitoring the situation and not wanting to get stuck. Fortunately, we're not there yet, but it is a concern. Duncan is a partner with the investment firm Altitude X Aviation Group and has been an airline executive for 30 years. Over my career, I have been involved several times with an individual localized fuel supply shortage. So a pipeline can break.

Fuel tanks can be contaminated. But he's never seen anything like the situation we're in right now, where there's a very real growing possibility of global jet fuel shortages. This is something the industry has never really had to deal with before, certainly in our lifetimes. Europe is most dependent on jet fuel imports from the Middle East. And Samuel Engel at Boston University's Questrum School of Business says the IEA is right to be warning about the risk of shortages.

Europe imports a third of its jet fuel, of which 75% is coming from the Middle East. It takes weeks for fuel to get from the Middle East to Europe, and the last shipment that made it through the Strait of Hormuz arrived last week. This doesn't mean that planes are going to stop flying on June 1st. But it could mean airlines start canceling more flights, and that ticket prices could rise even more. Leonard Berbury, aviation editor for the Daily newspaper Courieres de la Cera in Milan, says Italians are getting lost. We have a bunch of people writing emails and asking us at the newspaper, hey, do you have any visibility on our flights for July and August? Because we have already booked the flights.

And he says the answer is not really. What the sources tell us in Italy and also in Europe is that we have jet fuel for May, for sure. But after May, we have no idea. Europe has been buying more jet fuel than usual from the U.S. but it's not enough to make up for what it's losing from the Middle East. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. Coming up. Whenever I need to fix something,

if I want it fast and then very quick, I just go here. The global economy on a street corner in Hocci Minh City. But first, sure, why not? Let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's up 115 today. That's in points. The percentage is a quarter of 1%. 48,578.

The NASDAQ added 86 points, 410%. percent, 24,102. The S&P 500 picked up 18 points, also a quarter percent, ended things at 7,041. We were talking pigs and soybeans. Brian Duncan just a minute ago, Smithfield Foods, the biggest pork producer in the world, fattened up 2 and 2 tenths percent on the day Tyson put on 1 percent. PepsiCo reported to jump at first quarter revenue this morning. Snagged beverage maker's been cutting prices and leaning toward certain health trends,

like adding fiber and protein to things like Doritos and popcorn. Sure. healthy. Pepsi Coke. I'm 2.3% today. Bonds down yield on the 10-year T-note rose to 4.31%. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. We have been telling stories from Vietnam this week for our series, The Age of Work. Today, two stories about an economy at an inflection point. First, is this residential area? Yes, I think because the city is sprawling everywhere. Neela Richardson and I, along with our fixer Andy.

We're on a street in a Ho Chi Men City, a busy street in a crowded neighborhood with tons of apartment buildings and a sprawling electronics market. In here you have a mix of electronic product and then also electronic service. Like they are fixing things. Literally fixing electronics in the street

as motorbikes whiz by with stalls and vendors everywhere. You have like vendor who sell a speaker and then vendor who's fixed. Let's just enjoy the speakers as we walk by. These speakers work just fine. We just passed a television remote stand, which clearly that's what they do. There was a guy who had power cords for electronic devices. That was his thing.

Whenever I need to fix something, if I want it fast and then very quick, I'll just go here. I don't think you could find that if you went to a store in the U.S., like all the different cables. Radio Shack, we hardly knew you. Yeah, exactly, exactly. We stopped at a booth on the corner. One guy seated at his workbench, cords and cables everywhere, spare parts, a dozen or so rolls of thin copper wire.

What's he doing now? What is this? So he's replacing a speaker from Japan, and he's just replacing it. $10 an hour, flat rate. Speakers and batteries are his specialty have been for 32 years. years.

How's business? It's going on. Like normal, he noticed the change like because it's been 32 years and the city changed. They build new residential building and then people move away. He's like he's comfortable with his walk here. Is what he's working on, does he see it changing as the economy changes? He first, the do China much. He noticed like the change in the origin of this product.

Like back then there was more from China, but now it's more from America and then Japan. And is that because his clients have changed or the products have changed? It's the product that changed. It's the product that changed. Because like the product from Japan and America the quality is also better. Do you do this,

you're just like saying for electronic. If you don't use them, they will still break anyway, so it's better to use. And you have guys like him to fix. Can't really argue with that. That was stop number one.

Today, a slice of the global economy on a street corner in Vietnam with a guy fixing beat up old speakers. Stop number two is only four and a half miles away, but it is totally different. Where's it? We're rolling, yeah. There are parks and cafes and a lot of big shining glass office buildings. Hi, I'm Nila. Nice to meet you.

Good to see them. Kai. How are you? Nice to meet you. Tan Fom is the founder and CEO of Saigon Technology. We have no suit, kowshel. Gotcha, we will take off our shoes. There we go. All right, shoes off, everybody. It was mid-afternoon when we got there. It's a huge room, rows and rows of low-rise cubicles,

50 or so people plugging away on their laptops. Ton said he's got 400 software engineers overall in Vietnam, more overseas. And on a map on the wall of his corner office, pins showing where his customers are. As you can see, our customer from all over the world with majority in the USA, Australia, and European countries. Some recognizable names, too. Abbott Laboratories and Panasonic.

So who is your typical client? Our customer mainly working in FinTech, banking, financial service, and healthcare sector. Saigon Technology makes software for other companies, an app for a plumbing company to track hours worked or a ticketing platform for an events company. We tend to turn Saigon technology into a global IT firm that can contribute to the business work-wide. We try to extend our business globally, not only in Vietnam. Thing is, the global technology industry is already in Vietnam. Google and Apple and Amazon all have offices in Hocchimin City, and more are coming,

because that's what the Vietnamese government wants. They're using tax incentives and subsidies for high-tech enterprises and workforce training programs to do it because the workers we have been talking about, they are what companies want. How do you, especially for the Vietnamese market, for this office, how do you get them to come to this office as opposed to other places? We pay a good salary, we build a good career path for them. So when they come to us for the interview, we always ask them clearly what's your next goal to make sure that we can set the right expectation for them. And then we help them to build a career path.

So you started this company after having worked in some other technology companies, right? Yes, yes. So there's a room full of ambitious people out there. Yes. Do you worry about you training them and eventually one day they're going to start a company that's going to be your competition? Yeah, I think actually that could be a good sign that we are doing a great job in building entrepreneurship culture.

That means the demand in the markets increase significantly. And you're all right with that? I'm all right with that. If I cannot compete with my employee, how can I compete with all the big firm? Good point. We heard that from every business owner we talk to. They're investing in local talent because it'll be good for the economy, even or especially if those workers wind up starting companies of their own.

And those workers, they know it. We bring our products that we bring our products to the world. Yeah. We have the people to make the beautiful, product for you guys. So please come to Vietnam and we make things for you. That's Ms. Hung. She's one of the mobile developers working in that big room at Saigon technology. And truth be told, what she just said could sum up this whole series. It's the advantage we were talking about on Monday. Vietnam's workforce is a lot cheaper and a lot younger

than the American workforce right now. And that is why they are making all the things for us. Our last story from Ho Chi Men City comes tomorrow, an American company setting up shop in Vietnam. This final note on the way out today, we don't usually do a whole lot of personnel moves on this program, but this one does seem worth a mention. Netflix co-founder and former CEO Reid Hastings said today, he's going to step down from the company's board of directors in June. Getting CDs in the mail? Seamall involves quaint now, doesn't it?

Little remembered fact, by the way. 25 or so years ago. Hastings went to Blockbuster, remember them, and offered to sell them Netflix, $50 million, no takers. Market cap today for Netflix,

by the way, about 455 billion American. Our daily production team includes Livy Burdette, Andy Corbin, Maria Hollenhorst, Sarah Leeson, Sean McHenry,

Michaelasea, and Sophia Torenzio. Will Story is the supervising senior producer, and I'm Kai Rizdal. We Will. Stay tomorrow, everybody. This is APM.

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