A Wall Street Journal article (July 27, 2011) describes the 2009 sales drop of 4.5 % and employment drop of 8.3 % and a ten year growth of 19 % while private sector jobs dropped 2 million.  One concept described is that of treatment of workers as variable cost because they can be hired “just in time”, due to the flexible labor market today.  In addition, the new workers added are often in foreign locations.  What is the point at which the potentially increased productivity of full time workers trump the flexibility of JIT employees ? Are there industries where a flexible labor approach, synched with demand, may increase costs over the long run ? How do we maintain the benefit of “process learning” in the face of an evolving employee pool ?