Temp job or not

I came across an article today in WSJ: "For Welfare Clients, Temporary Jobs Can Be a Roadblock". One research concludes that "Encouraging low-skilled workers to take temporary help agency jobs is no more effective -- and possibly less effective -- than providing no job placements at all". It sounds surprising, but seems reasonable as well.

It looks like the lemon market introduced by the Akerlof. Those with high skill tend to look for the job directly. Those with low skill get a job through temp agency. the temp job employers knows that. So, they offer jobs with low skill required and little experience accumulation potential. By the end, the low skill workers continue to be low skill with no experience. Therefore, no better prospect for higher wage or better employment.

The article also said that "The Bush administration recently signed a law updating welfare rules that will push states to move even more welfare recipients toward work and job training. The law requires that states place 50% of all their welfare cases into "work activities" and restricts what qualifies as work. Many college classes, for instance, will no longer count toward the work requirement as they once did. Credit for drug- and other substance-abuse programs is also limited."

If this story is true, the new law will not be useful. The available jobs offered by the government-spornored program will not help much. The pool of those government-spornored jobs will be low skilled added.

A better way seems to improve the skill set of the unemployed directly (rather than through the temp jobs), but I am not sure from my experience how effective the government will be in this area.

Here is the article from WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116611481972750289.html