Manufacturers' Outsourcing to Employment Services

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may ABSTRACTWe estimate the effects of manufacturers' use of employment services-comprised primarily of temporary help and professional employer organizations-on measured employment and labor productivity in manufacturing between 1989 and 2004. A major contribution of the paper is the construction of panel data on employment by occupation and industry from the Occupational Employment Statistics program. We use these data to document the dramatic rise of production and other manual occupations within the employment services sector and, in conjunction with information from the Contingent Worker Supplements, to estimate the number of employment services workers assigned to manufacturing over the period. Although measured employment in manufacturing declined by 4

Health Insurance and Labor Markets: Concepts, Open Questions, and Data Needs

“…Contract or temporary employees increasingly do work that previously was done by permanent employees. These contract/temporary workers may be employed in other domestic companies or self-employed (domestic outsourcing), or may be workers in companies or affiliates located overseas (offshoring) (Dey, Houseman, and Polivka 2006;Houseman 2006). Another trend is the formation of small companies headed by an entrepreneur and staffed entirely by independent contractorassociates (Swartz 2006(Swartz , 2008.…”

“…Dey, Houseman, and Polivka (2006) discuss the limitations of existing data sets in measuring the extent of outsourcing with the overall conclusion that outsourcing is undercounted in existing household data sets.…”

Outsourcing, Offshoring, and Productivity Measurement in U.S. Manufacturing

“…The conclusion in BLS (2004)-that outsourcing and offshoring had minor effects on productivity growth in manufacturing and played no role in the acceleration of manufacturing labor productivity during the 1990s-simply is not supported by estimates based on data generated in Dey, Houseman, and Polivka (2006). It appears unlikely that differences in productivity concepts (output per worker vs. output per hour) and the time periods over which they are measured explain these inconsistencies.…”

“…Although it is impossible to determine the extent to which mismeasurement of inputs and these types of labor cost savings from outsourcing and offshoring have contributed to the recent growth of measured manufacturing productivity, I point to several pieces of evidence indicating that these factors are significant: 1) apparent understatement of the contribution of manufacturers' outsourcing to the staffing sector in previous productivity statistics (Dey, Houseman, and Polivka 2006); 2) findings that services offshoring, which is likely to be significantly underestimated and associated with significant labor cost savings, accounts for a surprisingly large share of recent manufacturing multifactor productivity growth (Amiti and Wei 2006); and 3) the small high-tech sector, which pioneered the development of global production networks and outsourced much of the work performed domestically, accounted for about a third of multifactor productivity growth in the U.S. economy in the late 1990s. Together, this evidence makes a prima facie case that mismeasurement and labor cost savings from outsourcing and offshoring have significantly influenced measured manufacturing and, in the case of offshoring, aggregate productivity growth.…”

Subcontratación y medición de la productividad en la industria estadounidense

“…Aunque a los trabajadores contratados por una agencia de personal se les destina a una empresa cliente en la que suelen trabajar codo con codo con los empleados de ésta, figuran como asalariados de la primera. Se han hecho estudios rigurosos, tanto generales como monográficos, según los cuales aumentó espectacularmente el número de trabajadores cedidos de este modo a la industria manufacturera de los Estados Unidos, tanto en cifras absolutas como relativas, sobre todo en los años noventa (Segal y Sullivan, 1997;Estevão y Lach, 1999, y Dey, Houseman y Polivka, 2006. Sin embargo, las estimaciones de la Oficina de Análisis Económico con las que se elaboran las estadísticas de la productividad indican que durante ese período el porcentaje de trabajadores cedidos por agencias de subcontratación de personal era bajo y tendía al descenso.…”