text: Most of the temporary and part-time jobs currently being created are low skill, very low waged and extremely insecure. The Financial Times recently discussed (paywall) Amazon's warehouse operation in Rugeley. Amazon, it seems, is employing mainly temporary workers who can be dismissed without notice and offering the "carrot" of a permanent job if they are really, really good - which few are. Obviously this is only one large employer, but it seems likely that others are doing similarly. The interesting thing is that Amazon is using people to do a warehousing job that would seem an obvious candidate for automation. And Amazon is definitely not short of money. So why is it using low-wage, low-skill temporary workers instead of investing in cutting-edge automation?