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The Gig Economy Keeps Growing, But Worker Benefits Aren't (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: According to a new report out from Brookings, the number of non-employer firms -- primarily incorporated freelancers and gig-economy workers -- has grown 2.6 percent every year since 1997. By contrast, payroll employment has grown by only 0.8 percent annually in that time. That means a growing number of people lack employer-sponsored benefits like paid leave, health care, and retirement assistance. The Aspen Institute has proposed a system of portable benefits that are not tied to one job. Companies would make contributions to a worker's benefits on the basis of how much the employee works for them. To date, the U.S. government has not been helpful. House and Senate bills supporting gig-worker benefits have died in committee. But state and local governments are taking action. Washington, California, New York, and New Jersey are exploring avenues to provide benefits to their gig workers.
To date, the U.S. government has not been helpful. House and Senate bills mandating gig-worker benefits have died in committee.
FTFY
Everyone thinks they deserve something for nothing. Premium benefits, unlimited time off, first class insurance. All paid for by someone else. Look, if you're driving people around from point A to point B, or answering customer complain calls for a living, you aren't doing something that's worth those kind of benefits. Sucks, but it's true. Improve your skills, become marketable, hoist yourself up by your own petards, and join the economy as a maker and not a taker.
The "gig-economy" isn't a new concept. This is how things used to be before there were unions. What happened was laborers were exploited and then unionized to fight back for fair treatment. The outcome here will be no different, even if different means are used.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
12000 PER year in insurance.
Yeah. In 1999 12k per year would have bought me a full coverage plan with 0 co pay for my whole family and then some etc etc etc.
This year that buys me basically catastrophic coverage for 2 people.
We dumped HUGE sums of cash into the system and all of the pencil pushers raised the prices accordingly.
between "The Gig Economy" and running your own business where you use a service to find customers?
around minimum wage and overtime laws. There's no other purpose. If you're a worker then you should be deeply opposed to this. Unless you're in a strong union they _will_ eventually come for you too. And the only strong union left I know of is the AMA. Lord knows us tech workers don't have anything of the sort.
The only potential good that might come out of all this is America might wise up and vote single payer healthcare in. But right now the party in charge is completely opposed to it and I don't see them getting kicked out anytime soon. We're still arguing over assault rifles and abortion for Pete's sake (hurray for wedge issues!).
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Legal chain immigration brings about 1M legal immigrants into the country per year. That's on top of the illegals, most of whom compete with workers on the low end.
It doesn't matter what you feel about immigration. The fact is that our immigration policies are nothing more than a safety valve on capital to ensure that the supply side is always high enough that the demand side never has to negotiate.
Here's a simple plan that would cause real growth in average wages very quickly:
1. Build the wall with the military's budget like Trump is threatening.
2. Abolish chain immigration.
3. Shred the green cards of all immigrants who arrived on chain migration in the last 20 years and order them to self-deport or face prison time.
4. Tie corporate taxes to how much business and how many American citizens are employed by the business.
5. Impose steep FICA excise taxes on outsourced labor. Make that offshore team in India so damn expensive in FICA costs that its not competitive.
6. Shred NAFTA and impose a minimum 25% tariff on all goods made by American companies in Mexico for the American market.
7. Pass a federal law that allows state and federal law enforcement to declare any business that relies on illegals to be a criminal enterprise as a whole entity and make its entire asset sheet liable for liquidation upon conviction.
If you force the companies to treat contractors like employees, they'll pay them the same.
The lack of restrictions hiring and firing and benefits is one of the reasons contractors get paid more than employees.
If you're married then most of the time you only need one spouse to have the benefits. I get all of mine from my wife and the only thing I'm missing out on is life insurance and vision.
Having a job with no benefits is a better financial decision compared to working as a W2 and not using any of the benefits
Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a supply problem. The world is oversupplied with labor (people) for the amount of work demanded, thanks to productivity, automation, and the gradual end of the baby boomer growth era that fueled jobs and pay for everyone without a college degree.
No amount of hand-wringing or puzzling over the edges of the gig economy, or living wages, the decline of manufacturing, or working conditions, are going to overcome the fundamental pressure of demographics.
There are too many workers for companies to feel any pressure to raise wages, provide better benefits, or do anything that they don't need to, to keep sufficient workers on staff. (in general).
Welcome to what it feels like when growth stalls -- everyone yells at everyone else thinking that someone caused / can fix the problem, when in fact it's mostly out of our hands. Don't worry, it'll work itself out -- in about 10-15 years... just wait a while.
The problem with using "just get better" as a justification for accepting growing inequality is that it does not scale. If everyone had PhD's, there wouldn't be enough room for the elite positions, and many PhD's would end up mopping floors and other grunt work.
It's not a zero-sum game, but close enough that "just get better" isn't a complete solution.
American workers rank among the top in the world in economic productivity, but the benefits of that hard work is not trickling down to most workers. I'm not proposing pure socialism, just enough of it to distribute the wealth better without significantly harming incentives. There's a better balance point than what we have now. Set the dial to 5 instead of 9 on the socialism-to-plutocracy scale.
Table-ized A.I.
minimum wage laws stop the race to the bottom. They buoy up wages leading to consumers who can purchase your goods and services. Without them a handful of robber barons monopolize everything. Great if you end up one of the barons, but that's highly unlikely.
tl;dr. No man is an island.
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Look at Japan or any number of European countries and see how many young people are working as contractors. They don't accrue retirement benefits like the previous generation and are screwed in the long run unless they are hired on at a company.
When the price of taking people on as full time employees is too high then businesses will do everything possible to avoid. This means contractors and outsourcing wherever feasible.
The Gig Economy Keeps Growing, But Worker Benefits Aren't
Umm... wasn't that kind of the whole point of companies pushing for a gig economy? Does anybody really believe that this consequence wasn't at least foreseen, if not downright planned for, by the corporate sector? Corporations believe it to be in their best interests both to reduce the amount of money they pay their employees, and to decrease those employees' freedom and autonomy so as to make them more docile and compliant. A gig economy gives workers the illusion of increased freedom, even as it increases their servitude. I'm pretty sure that's the penultimate wet-dream of c-levels and board members everywhere. Of course, the ultimate wet-dream is to replace all those workers with machines.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
... it's corporate socialism. It is however sold to us as capitalism by the Ayn Rand fans. She'd be appaled.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
... I call it.
It will pass sooner than we expect.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
There is more than enough work to give every person a job, automation or no automation. Fixing America's existing, crumbling infrastructure alone would create millions of jobs. Rolling out a high-speed rail network would create millions more. As would putting up windmills and solar panels all over the place, backed up by pumped storage if need be.
subcombs to greed.
[($)]
Shocked I tell you. Disgusted and shocked at this new concept that the USA government doesn't provide workers in the country with legal protection. This is completely news to...
okay I couldn't finish that sentence without laughing at the idea that people in the USA have workers rights. Quite frankly we normally use the USA as a punchline when discussing worker's rights. So congress's response is at least expected and consistent.
the number of non-employer firms -- primarily incorporated freelancers and gig-economy workers -- has grown 2.6 percent every year since 1997. By contrast, payroll employment has grown by only 0.8 percent annually in that time.
Do you see the deception in that quote? Number of "firms" compared to "payroll employment". What that tells me is that many small firms are being started (which is a good thing), but most start-ups have few workers (employee or not). Meanwhile, overall employment across the economy is growing at at healthy rate.
And gig economy has nothing to do with unions or guilds; everything from electricians and plumbers to doctors and lawyers are part of the gig economy. If you have a marketable skill you'll do well.
If your main employment is in the "gig" economy, then you're unemployed. This thing where we are all being forced into "gigs" instead of real jobs with real, actual benefits, is a new form of slavery. Row, number 41. No, fuck that shit.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Actually, no, it does not mean that at all. I've had my own corporation for over 10 years, and always carried health insurance as well as contributed to by own Keogh Plan.
Doing business as your own corporation is enormously liberating, in fact — in a very real sense. You can change a clients, but you don't have to change your retirement plan arrangements, nor your insurer, for example.
What really worries the Illiberals at Brookings is that people working for themselves do not hate "corporations" and are harder to control and less reliant on the benevolent and omniscient government bureaucrats (a.k.a. "the swamp"). Stalin forced peasants into collective farms for the same reasons — independent ones tend to obtain a few things to lose other than their "chains"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.