Another sign of economic spring

A smidgeon of good news has been buried in local job numbers for the past couple of months, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a full-throated trend developing when March figures are released Friday.

Temporary workers are being called back. January was the first month since February 2008 when more temps were on the job in the Indianapolis area than in the same month a year earlier, and February repeated the performance. The upswing started at the state level a month earlier.

Manufacturers, warehouses and other industries like hiring temps because they can unload them quickly if the economic recovery falters. Permanent manufacturing workers who survived the recession have been racking up overtime for a few months, and bringing in temps is the next step before resorting to permanent hires.

Don’t mistake the temp uptick as anything huge. There were only 29,400 of them on the job locally in February, the fewest for the month since 2004.

But it’s improvement.

Any thoughts about temp workers? They occasionally complain they’re not treated the same as permanent employees. Would you agree?