Temp Agencies better Jobs not likely – No
Do temp agencies find better jobs? In a word the answer is no. Temp agencies exist in order to find short-term work at a moment's notice for those willing to work a job that could end also at that moment's notice. Temp agencies find work for people recently displaced out of a job, in order to keep them "employed" and off of unemployment rolls. Some states will only pay out six months of unemployment, and in order to stop gap that, the temp agency will often schedule jobs that it receives from companies in three-month increments.
Some temp agencies work with private sector employers to provide the opportunity of full employment with that company, however, the likelihood of that happening given the current climate has gone from slim down to slimmer still, to nearly nil. The pay situation is usually just above minimum wage, submitting the cute little timesheets, and getting paid by the temp agency rather than the employer.
The attitude you might have is "Something is better than nothing," which is true, but the job being temporary doesn't allow for any long-term career planning, or much in the way of paying off college debts, house payments, rising utility bills, and most importantly food. The situation gets stickier if the agency is somehow linked to a government agency. In order to qualify for government pay under the contract with the temp agency, you have to be on the payroll of the temp agency, which would require a timesheet having been filled either one or two weeks for the temp agency before the government would pay for the work done. The government takes three weeks to pay the first paycheck.
So, in order to get your money from the temp agency aligned with the government you'd have to work five weeks before seeing the first dime of it. I don't know about you but life isn't free. Living life is even less free. Bills cost money and if you aren't getting money for your work, well, that's deficit living. It would necessitate living on credit, but if you don't have credit, or worse yet, you have bad credit (like unpaid student loans, for instance), you're just plain S.O.L. Public agencies, like the Department of Labor in the People's Republic of New York, tend to be clearinghouses for job placement, and this service is done with tax dollars and to alleviate some of the pressures on prospective employers for actually searching for candidates for jobs.
While the public agencies could find better jobs perhaps than the private temp agencies, a lot of the same criteria apply, and certainly the same pay scales would apply. Though a "job service" like the public agency does have its own share of low paying jobs, there is the alternative of signing up to take civil service exams. These exams identify skills for jobs within government. However, with the economy still in shambles, it is becoming more difficult even to gain employment in the government. Either way, the whole experience feels like the rug has been pulled out from underneath you and temp agencies are the equivalent of "going back to square one."
