2003/01/01 by David Autor, David H. Autor · 8 citations
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Digital Economy and Work Transformation #Employment and Welfare Studies #Labor Movements and Unions
paper · doi:10.1086/344122
openalex publication_date 2003/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Over the past 3 decades, the U.S. Temporary Help Services (THS) industry grew five times more rapidly than overall employment. Contemporaneously, courts in 46 states adopted exceptions to the common law doctrine of employment at will that limited employers’ discretion to terminate workers and opened them to litigation. This article assesses the contribution of “unjust dismissal” doctrine to THS employment specifically, and outsourcing more generally, finding that it is substantial—explaining 20% of the growth of THS between 1973 and 1995 and contributing 500,000 additional outsourced workers in 2000. States with smaller declines in unionization also saw substantially more THS growth.