In October of 1970, what is now Suburban Job-Link was incorporated as Just Jobs, Inc., an Illinois not-for-profit corporation. A scale of justice was the logo and the goal was justice in the temporary help industry. The Chicago Campaign for Human Development and the Chicago Mayor’s Office of Manpower, now the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development, provided seed money.

The first employees were four Uptown residents, assigned to work at the Chesterton Candy Company on Chicago’s near West Side. The workers’ hourly pay was 31% more than they received from commercial staffing firms and they were paid time-and-a-half for overtime.

Commercial staffing services had paid them no overtime, and required them to work under an assumed name and Social Security number if they wished to work more than 40 hours in a week.

Just Jobs also went against industry convention by ensuring that workers’ and unemployment compensation insurance claims were properly processed and paid. The owner of the commercial staffing service across the street complained that he had to "beat claimants off with a stick" to keep his costs down.

The organization was the nation's first not-for-profit to launch and effectively operate a temporary help staffing service as a platform for upgrading employment opportunities for residents of low-income inner-city neighborhoods. By 1986, it had a top share of the light industrial contracting market and employed more than 800 people per day. To date, Suburban Job-Link has directly employed more than 35,000 Chicago residents.

In 1974, Suburban Job-Link introduced the concept of "supported work" in a program serving ex-offenders and individuals recovering from heroin addiction. In 1976, Just Jobs received the James Brown IV Award for Excellence in Community Service from the Chicago Community Trust.

In 1981, with funding from the Corporation for Public/Private Ventures in Philadelphia, Suburban Job-Link demonstrated the viability of using temporary employment as a bridge to permanent jobs for minority youth. In the mid-1980s, Suburban Job-Link and Operation ABLE, a Chicago not-for-profit agency that focuses on the needs of older workers, entered into a joint venture to enhance temporary employment opportunities for that population by creating ABLE's Pool of Temporaries (APT).

In 1995, with funding from the Mayor's Office of Workforce Development and the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, Suburban Job-Link established the Oasis Facility in Bensenville, Illinois. The Oasis provided a connection between city jobseekers and suburban employers, offering job search and transportation assistance, thereby increasing access to entry-level and semi-skilled openings beyond the reach of fixed route public transportation. Recognized for its outstanding creativity in partnering with business for the benefit of the community, Suburban Job-Link was awarded the 1999 Masterworks Award by the Dayton Hudson Foundation (now the Target Foundation) and the Council on Foundations.

Suburban Job-Link is widely recognized for its development and testing of appropriate commuter transportation solutions for lower-income workers. Early successes of its fixed-route express bus models attracted nation attention, and played a role in the development of more than $100 million in federal funding under the Access to Jobs and Reverse Commute provision in the Transportation Equity Act of 1998.

In 2000, Suburban Job-Link adopted CoreTemp as the brand under which to operate its light industrial temporary staffing service in the highly competitive temporary help industry. While the light industrial segment of the industry is notorious for practicing racial discrimination and exploiting those at the bottom of the labor queue, CoreTemp offers the business community and jobseekers a refreshing alternative.