Temporary and part-time jobs can actually be a benefit to both employees as well as employers. The biggest problem right now is that government labor/employment policy and law is all aimed at reinforcing the sort of large-scale industrial era labor force we had in the late 1800s and early 1900s. If those policies were wholly revised and temporary/part-time workers put on an equal footing with the traditional full-time workers - both in terms of the benefits/costs they bear directly as well as the benefits/costs their employers bear - then more individuals would be able to successfully take advantage of the benefits available on a temporary/part-time employment system.
For example, when I was in undergrad I drove city buses for the local town bus system. All of us drivers were part-timers - even though the core of us usually ended up getting more than 40 hours a week - and because the scheduling system was designed to work around student schedules (the town received substantial support from the university by trying to make it as easy as possible for students to work as bus drivers, and one aspect of this was that most shifts were in three-hour chunks) I was able to fine-tune my work-week so that I had at least one or two days a week where I had most of the 9-5 part of the day available to take care of things like shopping that are hard to do if you spend all week working 9-5. That effectively gave me the same sort of freedom of schedule that most business owners/sole proprietors have, while still retaining the safety and security of a steady paycheck each week. Win-win for both me and the bus company.
