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Jobs that used to come with some guarantees, even union membership, have been transformed into gigs. Temp workers are not just found driving Ubers; they are in hospitals and universities and insurance companies. The manufacturing sector—still widely mistaken as the fount of good, sturdy, hard-hat jobs—now employs more than a million temp workers. Long-term employment has declined steadily in the private sector, particularly for men, and temp jobs are expected to grow faster than all others over the next several years. Income volatility, the extent to which paychecks grow or shrink over short periods of time, has doubled since 1970. For scores of American workers, wages are now wobbly, fluctuating wildly not only year to year but month to month, even week to week.
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