A contingent job is one that's not expected to be permanent. It does not include independent contractors, on-call workers, temp agency workers, or workers provided by contract firms.
Anyway, every once once in a great while the BLS measures this, and their first report in six years dropped today. After such a long wait I'm sure you're eager to see the results:
This is the first significant increase ever, and it's not clear why. More side hustles? More gig workers? Straggling effects from the pandemic? Hard to say. Still, the increase amounts to only 800,000 workers out of 160 million, so it's probably not a big deal in any case.
I think their methodology (and few data points) is hiding messy numbers.
I don't see any reason to believe contingent work is any less than the 90s. Maybe there truly was a low when we needed fewer envelopes stuffed, but...
Re: A contingent job is one that's not expected to be permanent. It does not include independent contractors, on-call workers, temp agency workers, or workers provided by contract firms.
Then what does it include? Maybe people hired in retail to work the Christmas rush?
Well, since they started (?) measuring in 1995…