A staffing company works by taking all the hardship out of the equation for the potential employer. They handle all the headhunting, interviews, payroll, etc. The employer doesn't pay me, the staffing company does. The way it's supposed to work is after a certain period of time (6 months to a year in my experience) the employer actually hires you on as a true employee. In the last 5 years though that seems to have changed. By keeping you at arms length through the staffing firm the employer can get all the work they want out of you without having to cough up money for such trivial things as health insurance or retirement benefits. This you can imagine saves the employer a lot of money while keeping the employee screwed. Not only screwed but with my crazy schedule pretty much locked into the job. $10 for my $1 is pretty inconsequential when you figure in the tens of thousands their saving by shirking the potential benefits. It also means they can fire me anytime it's economically viable for literally zero reason. It's fubar.
Staffing companies also allow companies to amortize and rebate their workers differently. By working through a staffing company you cease to be an employee and become a line item in a spreadsheet. It may not even be "cheaper" for them to hire you through a staffing company without accounting for tax benefits and accounting trickery, which are likely substantial savings. Seriously, though, dude. I've been there. You're a polar bear on a shrinking ice floe. Whatever it takes to give you some jumping room? Do it. There's no happy ending for you here. You know it. Once the job is gone (and you know in your heart of hearts the job will go away) you'll bust ass to get another one. The trick is to bust ass now.
So workers of staffing companies are classed as something like private contractors rather than employees? We have a neologism here in France Uberization (from the company Uber... you probably heard how popular it is here ;) ) - there is a lot of discussion of Uberization of the workforce. Is this what's happening here?
An outsourced HR and payroll department, essentially?