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As for the "hot economy," many of the jobs being created are part-time or without benefits. Let me tell you about the temp job I have right now:
I'm working in a public university in the publications dept. They have _two_ temporary four hour openings: one in the morning, one in afternoon. Same work, same workstation even. Why have two instead of one? So they don't have to pay benes, which would be required otherwise.
And there's a lot of that going around: multiple half-time jobs instead of single full-time jobs, and I'm talking knowledge-worker jobs here.
Aside from that, it's starting to dawn on some folks that the booming economy could deflate fairly quickly. A big part of the economic growth of the last few years has been built on creative credit, low interest rates, home equity cash-outs, and a booming real estate, mortgage, and home construction industries. Pull out the low interest rates -- just that one change -- and it all starts to fall apart. Home equity cash vanishes. Hundreds of thousands of jobs vanish in construction and real estate and banking. Foreclosures rise, real estate prices fall. You want a scary figure: one in 50 adult Californians has a real estate license. A whole lot of them are going to be on the street soon, if they ever even got off the street.
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