“With the life-cycle of products shrinking and competition coming from unexpected corners of the globe, companies have to be more nimble than ever. This uncertainty helps some workers: if a firm has no idea from which direction the next competitive threat will come, one of its few sensible strategies is to amass good people to prepare for as many contingencies as possible. But it also increases the pressure on companies to contract out their ‘non-core’ activities to (often smaller) specialized companies or to use more temporary workers than in the past (as four in five American firms now do).”[i]
[i] “The Future of Work: Career Evolution,” The Economist, January 29, 2000, p. 90.