Like many large corporations Caterpillar, the Illinois-based heavy equipment maker, is increasing the size of their contingent workforce (freelancers, contractors, consultants, temps, etc.).
What's interesting about Caterpillar is they've decided to include information on contingents in their quarterly earnings releases. They call this group "flexible workers" and report each quarter how many they have and how many they hired.
For the quarter just ending, they reported their flexible workforce totaled 27,385, up 7,117 employees from 20,268 at the end of the same period in the previous year. This is a 35.1% increase.
Full-time, traditional employment at Caterpillar rose 18.7 percent to 121,513 workers at the end of the third quarter.
This means 18.1% of Caterpillar's workforce is flexible (contingent). This percentage has consistently grown since Caterpillar starting reporting this information.
We haven't talked to anyone at Caterpillar, so we don't know why they are choosing to report this. Our guess is to show they are adding workers, and adding U.S. workers as part of a broader corporate growth story.
Regardless of the reason, kudos to Caterpillar for this show of transparency.
The growing use of "flexible" workers is one of the reasons we're forecasting the continued growth of independent work and workers. See our State of Independence report for more details.
Regardless of the purpose, cheers to Caterpillar for this display of visibility.
Posted by: used caterpillar parts | May 26, 2012 at 07:54 AM