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October 1996

Contingent and alternative work arrangements, defined

Anne E. Polivka

Contingent workers have no explicit or implicit contract for a long-term employment arrangement; depending on how measured, as many as 6 million workers were contingent in February 1995. This article discusses the definitions of contingent workers and alternative work arrangements used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to analyze data from a special supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS), and presents aggregate estimates of the number of workers in each group thus identified.

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