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Why Hasn't The Gig Economy Killed Traditional Work? (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes NPR:
In recent months, a slew of studies has debunked predictions that we're witnessing the dawn of a new "gig economy." The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that there was actually a decline in the categories of jobs associated with the gig economy between 2005 and 2017. Larry Katz and the late Alan Krueger then revised their influential study that had originally found gig work was exploding. Instead, they found it had only grown modestly. Other economists ended up finding the same -- and now writers are declaring the gig economy is "a big nothingburger."
Arun Sundararajan, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and the author of The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism, remains a true believer in the gig revolution.... When asked about the onslaught of data contradicting his thesis, Sundararajan said the Bureau of Labor Statistics continues "to underestimate the size of the gig economy and in particular of the platform-based gig economy." The best BLS estimate of the number of gig workers employed through digital platforms -- whether full-time, part-time or occasionally -- is one percent of the total U.S. workforce, or about 1.6 million workers, as of mid-2017. Sundararajan argues that the survey questions the BLS used to gather this data were clunky and don't quite capture what's going on.... He believes work done through gig platforms can be more efficient than work done in a traditional company -- and that will spell the company's doom...
The dawn of a new gig economy has seemed plausible because the Internet has been dramatically reducing transaction costs. Search engines have made it incredibly cheap to find goods and services, compare prices, and get bargains. Social media and peer reviews have made it easier to determine if people are trustworthy. E-commerce has made it easier process payments. You can click a button on a mobile phone and instantaneously have GPS guide drivers right to you. But as big as these efficiency gains have been, a new economy based on crowds of people doing gigs through digital platforms -- as exciting or scary as that might sound -- still doesn't compare to one based on the efficiencies and stability of the good old-fashioned company.
Arun Sundararajan, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and the author of The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism, remains a true believer in the gig revolution.... When asked about the onslaught of data contradicting his thesis, Sundararajan said the Bureau of Labor Statistics continues "to underestimate the size of the gig economy and in particular of the platform-based gig economy." The best BLS estimate of the number of gig workers employed through digital platforms -- whether full-time, part-time or occasionally -- is one percent of the total U.S. workforce, or about 1.6 million workers, as of mid-2017. Sundararajan argues that the survey questions the BLS used to gather this data were clunky and don't quite capture what's going on.... He believes work done through gig platforms can be more efficient than work done in a traditional company -- and that will spell the company's doom...
The dawn of a new gig economy has seemed plausible because the Internet has been dramatically reducing transaction costs. Search engines have made it incredibly cheap to find goods and services, compare prices, and get bargains. Social media and peer reviews have made it easier to determine if people are trustworthy. E-commerce has made it easier process payments. You can click a button on a mobile phone and instantaneously have GPS guide drivers right to you. But as big as these efficiency gains have been, a new economy based on crowds of people doing gigs through digital platforms -- as exciting or scary as that might sound -- still doesn't compare to one based on the efficiencies and stability of the good old-fashioned company.
Because banks, lenders, landlords, etc don't look at gig work as 'steady employment'? People don't want to set up their own company, buy their own tools, pay for their own training, healthcare, taxes, etc? Not to mention the job offers are terrible, gigs worth doing are hard to find..
Perhaps, despite all the noise about how "a recession's coming!" -- people are no longer desperate enough to work for less than minimum wage for exploitative gig economy platforms.
All this has done is displace those who would have worked at McDonalds.
Unless there is a massive race to the bottom then really workers have just moved slightly from one business to another. Given there are no reasonable gains to had at this tier of income I'm not sure what he was hoping for.
Anything remotely successful in this area is still going to resemble a typical corporation. Ahem, Uber, where we have gone from crufty shitty taxi service to a better taxi service.
That is probably the only positive because the traditional Taxi sucked ass. It was so unreliable and expensive at one point that I had a personal driver(s). It was actually a group that would share a phone and they always said call at any time.
I would drive for uber.. iff I could drive twice a day and monetize my commute. If uber really was ride sharing, it might take off. Unfortunately, its just a global taxi company that can't seem to turn a profit, in spite of the fact that it doesn't have to buy medallions.
Would you like to go to the store and find no bread because the baker was sleeping one off? Or when the power goes out your lights stay out because some slacker doesn't want to interrupt his "Game of Thrones" marathon to fix your electric cables?
"Gig economy" is for losers and layabouts. The world ticks 24/7, not just when some hipster feels like rolling out of bed.
In my country, the business news has alternating titles of "unemployment increasing" (but less than expected) and (part-time) "new jobs increasing". The latter article implies those part-time new jobs are less than 15 hours per week, which fits a gig-economy structure. Similarly, the government is declaring "employment boom" (so dole-bludgers get off your arse) and "short-term migrant worker visa" (so corporations can train fewer people): They wonder why unemployment isn't decreasing.
Yes, strange that prognosticators forgot about economies of scale while spruiking the 'everyone is self-employed' economy. A slash-dotter recently opined that such an economy can exist only when robots are performing the menial service jobs.
I'd rather get paid all the time and slack off when I want than only get paid when I actually work
... traditional work kills YOU!
The dream of the gig economy is that the price of labor will drop through the floor as ever hungrier gig workers scramble for a chance to establish new channels for work. What has happened is that American workers would rather not work than get paid less than a full time employee would get paid to do the same work. If you carry the risk of living gig to gig, you should charge a premium, not a discount, and people who dip their toe in the gig world see the opposite. Give self employed people healthcare and tax cuts(allow single employee LLCs the same pass through as multiple employee LLCs) and you might see an uptick in gig employment. As is, itâ(TM)s just a another scam to depress wages.
"Gig economy" used to be called "contract work", it has always been a niche, and the new name has not changed anything about its upsides and downsides, which are well known and are the reason for it occupying that niche.
most individuals can not lead that kind of life!
;)
I have been a self employed contract programmer for 30+ years. It takes a different thought process to in essence run a small business which is what contractors/self employed/gig workers are doing.
I do not have personal/work lives. As an individual who is self employed I have a life.
Most individuals do not have the ability/drive/desire to run a business/be self employed. They do not have that special ability to create opportunities, cope with problems and solve them themselves.
Just my 2 cents
"Arun Sundararajan, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business... remains a true believer in the gig revolution...."
I bet Arun has tenure at NYU.
I wonder if his position at NYU became like that of an uber driver (an independent contractor), he'd still be "true believer in the gig revolution"??
For some people and some jobs the gig model works. For other jobs, firms just use it to circumvent worker protection. Recall that MS and others have paid huge fines for misclassification of workers. If everyone is honest, being a contract worker is a good deal.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The dawn of a new gig economy has seemed plausible because the Internet has been dramatically reducing transaction costs.
The improvements in efficiencies are the result of free markets and technological innovations. Not so much reduced transaction costs. Governments have actually been increasing transaction and related costs of doing business via increased regulations surrounding payments. All that irrational fear from drugs and terrorism has resulted in increased burdens on the traditional institutions and intermediary institutions which have driven up the costs of transacting business.
Search engines have made it incredibly cheap to find goods and services, compare prices, and get bargains.
It's true. But this isn't reducing transaction costs. Transaction costs are more related to the payment systems in use and the people required to maintain those systems. Real crypto currencies cut transaction costs, but traditional banking systems and payment networks have actually seen increased costs due to excess regulations and attempts to control what others do with there money.
Business frequently pay as much as 12% in transaction costs between the purchase and sale of said goods in transaction costs. There is probably a much higher cost that we aren't taking into account though than even this number because government isn't transparent and we don't know the true underlying costs of printing fiat currencies. This is in part the result of government controlled money and related regulations. It's not just government printing money- but also others printing counterfeits. The businesses that are crazy enough to abandon dollars blow my mind. I'm all in favor of digital solutions where they make sense. But all the government approved payment networks are super expensive relative to the transaction costs with crypto currencies. Particularly if you are not converting to and from fiat currencies. If you receive payment in crypto currencies you don't have additional burdens of converting currencies even if they are still lower than using a traditional payment system. A person who receives $1.00 worth of Dash for instance will pay nothing in transaction fees and less than a penny to spend it. If a customer pays $1 on a credit card or PayPal or some similar system 1/3 of that ends up in the hands of the payment processor. If the business receiving that money goes to purchase something with the remaining money they will ultimately pay that again. So really 2/6 of that $1 is wasted. The situation is even worse with international wire transfers in many cases. I have seen customers spend $120 in transaction fees to make payments on $117 ish dollars worth of merchandise. It gets worse because governments also doubled that relative to the price that the goods go for in a sales-tax free state like New Hampshire. In other words that $117 worth of goods would have sold for 50ish dollars in NH. The reason is not only VAT, but other regulations that increase the cost of doing business within Europe.
If those count?
The trades are full of small and medium contracting firms, not to mention no shortage of self-employed as well. Far from being a new thing of course.
Plantation owners thought it was a necessary system too. Funny how the exploiters can rationalize;(
At the grocery store company (in the central USA) where I work, a number of the ~twenty-somethings are doing "gigs", but not for any happy reason.
...And many of them try to push that work off the app when they can; to avoid the app fees and so they can skim on taxes as well...
All of them live on their own--so they need a full-time income--but none of them can find a starting job that is full-time.
And getting one part time job is easy, but most part-time jobs refuse to give fixed hours anymore, so it's nearly impossible to get two part-time jobs at different places.
So they are working one 'normal' part-time job (at the store, for 20-25 hours a week) and doing odd jobs on various phone/web app companies online. The online work is low-skill stuff like yard work, house cleaning, dog walking and so on.
So the truth with most of these people is that they're doing online gig work not because it's better than a part-time job, but because they can't find any full-time job, and because they can't find two part-time jobs that will schedule around each other.
I am not an economist, but I don't know that this is exactly a good sign.
I work by contract and it works fine because I specialized in my field. I don't have the daily consistency of work that an employee has but that is compensated for by my higher rate of pay. My annual income is about 70% higher than normal for employees in my field. I could easily get a job for any of the companies I contract to if I wanted. This type of contracting can only ever be a small percentage of the workforce IMO.
"Gigs" like driving for Uber are mostly for people who can't get a job. Maybe it's good if you're studying, or want extra income outside your normal job but who in their right mind would want to be an uber driver as a career?
When I just 'opted out' and went to enjoy my basement life.
Nobody hires full time anymore. Nobody promises raises for good performance anymore. Standing out as a productive employee is a double edged sword that in some places helps you rise fast and in others ensures employees or managers will gun for you to keep you from moving up.
Based on everyone I know (family included) running businesses, nobody is following the law 100%, lots of people get paid in cash and leave it off their taxes.
The whole system is broken from top to bottom, and the only way to tell the honest from the dishonest is if they are in debt, but only spending meagerly. Everyone else seems to be living with dirty laundry stinking up some part of their life.
You assume innovation can't solve the problems of "asset striping" by cheaper gig workers. Not all gigs are less profitable than working for someone else. I did computer repair work for years in the gig fashion. It paid better than anything in silicon valley relative to the cost of living there. I actually turned down a good paying job out of college to do gig work for a short while. In the process of starting another business I needed funds and fewer working hours such that I could get that business off the ground. Gig work works if you know how to take advantage of it.
UBI must be postponed once more.
> Why Hasn't The Gig Economy Killed Traditional Work?
Because there's still a demand for traditional work. Next.
What's not considered here is the floating ages of time fish. Were they to fall in sync with the gig crowd, we'd see a huge uptake in free form employment. Alas, time must squish and squash as it always has until it's kneaded into the form we want.
Because the workers needed to make the Gig Economy (TM) haven't embraced it? And why would that be? Maybe it's because:
1. Gig workloads are inconsistent. One day or night you're busy, the next you might be sparsely working
2. Too many people started competing for those gigs, which leads to....
3. The Gig payscale is awful and many people give it up after a while because they realize they'd make more at a boring steady job where they can reliably predict what their next paycheck will look like.
4. Hours are supposed to be flexible on whatever the worker wants to do, but in reality there are boom times and down times. If you're not working those, you're not paying your rent.
As an example of the above, we don't have Uber where I live but when I travel I use it a lot. It's great for the customer. But I also make a point of talking to the drivers about their experience with it as I'm quite curious about what they have to say. More than half the drivers I talk to say the profit for them keeps declining because of increasing operations costs and Uber's income share on the rides keeps shifting. Most of the full-time drivers say if they had known how the numbers would work out they would probably not have ditched their old day job to do Uber full time. Maybe one in 10 I talk to actually seem to enjoy it.
The gig economy is bullshit. It's just another fancy label for "you're going to be at will contractors and we're gonna pay you peanuts"
... similar technologies would save it anyway!
" You can click a button on a mobile phone and instantaneously have GPS guide drivers right to you.", wow what a great enabler! What can you do with it, some kind of postal service? It's not doing well as it is... Sure, Uber would have some success if the regulated competition needs to spend on licenses, insurances, minimum wages and such but it's not because it's more efficient but because it's circumventing the law (that we probably have way too many laws and regulations and circumventing them might be sometimes beneficial it's another story).
Otherwise some things never took off - yes you could have some products delivered to your door by the producer directly but even grocery delivery from big chains never were a success. Obviously you won't be making heart surgery or even smartphones in the "gig economy" and what other things you can make or offer are pretty well covered as they'll ever be, from plumbers to prostitution. That you'll have in some years some services as pervasive as Uber or heck YouTube and you'll be wondering how was the life before sure. But to have other special expectations about "gigs" is like people were saying when the hard drives went up 200% in prices in 2011-2012: I'll just save it in the cloud. Riiiight.
exists inside of traditional companies.. The difference is that traditional employees are paid for their mistakes and training. But in the gig economy, worker development is left to the gigger.
Believe it or not, there are still travel agencies you can walk into, talk to a travel agent, and book a flight/hotel/car rental through. Crazy, right?
Turns out there are a shitton of well-off baby boomers who don't prefer websites over "the old way", and the associated businesses will remain in business until they change their mind, or more likely, die out.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
...in 2008 we were in a drastic economic condition that allowed regulators to look away from business subcontracting employees to shed their responsibility in paying their fair share of taxes and benefits.
As our condition improved, regulators started to take a hard look at how employers were classifying their employees and a large amount of these employers saw the writing on the wall and hired their "contractors". The ones that didn't are currently taking their lumps with the AGs of many states.
So, companies got off not paying their fair share of comp, FICA, retirement, UI, and benefit packages for 4 or 5 years. You know, just like the banks. As usual, those "contactors" took it in the rectum and were held responsible to cover the full cost of taxes and insurance.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
First there was slavery/indentured servancy, but that didn't turn out so well with all the 'human rights' abuses and all. So the 'slave' corporation decided to rename to 'gig' corporation to improve its public image. Because 'cool hip sounding names are everything'., it doesn't matter what you do.
Next question.
... is more efficient.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Is this another April Fool's post?
Long term software I mean. It is more and more important how long one can maintain the software, fixing it, improving it than how effectively, how quickly you can write it from scratch (which is what "gig" economy is about: drive-by writing). That relies on healthy long term employment of real FTEs.
I heard from one of my works a reply to my criticism of his software: "it works". That is the lowest level of readiness of the software.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
A person who receives $1.00 worth of Dash for instance will pay nothing in transaction fees and less than a penny to spend it. If a customer pays $1 on a credit card or PayPal or some similar system 1/3 of that ends up in the hands of the payment processor.
Well, there are payment solutions that don't have such transaction fees. Many years ago, I got a debit card. There were a transaction fee of about 0.2 dollars. So I used the card only for big purchases, or for withdrawing money to spend on series of small purchases.
Then a bank advertised a card with no transaction fee. So I switched bank, and saved $150 every year. And stopped withdrawing money - with no fee, I used the card for everything. Even for small stuff like an icecream. So now I carry a much smaller wallet, because I have no need to have cash on hand on a day-to-day basis. (The bank makes its profit by holding my wage money - it can therefore lend out money which certainly isn't free.)
A card is less hassle than cash - and with no fee it is killing cash the same way the card killed cheques in the 1980's. Now some people try phone-based payment. Well, a phone is bigger than a card, and needs a charged battery to work. So the phone payment can only "win" if everybody is bringing a phone anyway for other reasons. Which most - but not all people do.
There is no cost for spending money in Europe - not if you have the right bank at least. There is plenty of cost (taxes etc.) for making profit - but that is not the same.
I used to worry too, but Cloud quantum AI blockchain actually made me uber productive in the end. So much so, I recommend it to all my friends and even some enemies, still booking record profits year after year! The secret was synergy with the booming Gig sharing economy. If you know the right place too look, you'd bag those pennies in a blink!
As in most industrialized countries, the labor force is declining which reduces the potential benefits of competition on the labor market. Furthermore, many more complex tasks require people doing a job for a longer time. Not providing them with a stable and guaranteed working environment will result in people leaving.
The gig economy isnâ(TM)t really that new. Casual jobs have been around for a very long time (forever?). Hereâ(TM)s a newsflash: most jobs benefit from specialisation of labour and experience and most employees prefer longer employment commitments.
because gigs are total shit like 90% of the time, the remaining 10% is typically mislabelled traditional self employment
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Between that, worldwide salary depression and automation, you will die of starvation in a gutter.
... is more efficient.
Yep. Kinda hard to staff a helpdesk by "gig", for example.
And the highest tier helpdesk are the programmers who actually know the system. Good luck providing that to your customers via "gig".
Workloads ebb and flow in almost every organization - if all workers are gigged (so to speak) then all the knowledge and experience walks out the door at the first ebb. Paying regular salary and benefits smooths out the ups and downs of labor requirements.
So basically this headline is basically asking why workers aren't volunteering to give up all the advances in labor protections we have made since the great recession.
There is no Gig-Economy because the Gig is up.
There are liability issues
it's unreliable and it's a mire of managing individual schedules for mission critical things. Delta T still rules where things need to scale.
Where I live and frok my perspective, I don't see any desperation or lack of full-time jobs. We probably live in different places, though. Anyway, you mentioned something that reminded me of something interesting.
> low-skill stuff like yard work, house cleaning, dog walking and so on.
Funny thing about that is the going rate for someone to cut your grass or clean your house is about $30/hour here in Dallas. (Roughly equivalent to $50/hour on the coast), yet the vast majority of people lacking marketable skills would rather make $12 / hour at a "regular job".
I've talked to a lot of people because I like to help young people get started and convicts get re-started and the number of people who choose $12/hour working for someone else rather than $30-$40/hour working for themselves is surprising to me.
It seems there are at least two reasons. A somewhat logical reason is that they want consistency. Doing gigs you don't know if you'll make $400 this week or $550. People like consistency so much they prefer to know they'll make $400 working at the mall.
A purely emotional reason is that people are so nervous about having their own business - despite the fact they know many twelve year old kids mow lawns. They might personally know a 12 year old who mows 10 lawns every week for $300, yet they work 30 hours for the same money because their nervous about whether they can do the same thing that kids all over America do.
The power is with the platform not with the gig workers.
Some of the anti-discriminatory laws and equal access laws can be more easily flouted in gig economy along with laws regarding safety, insurance etc. So a few bad apples can cut a large swath of the market to swear off such platforms.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And stopped withdrawing money - with no fee, I used the card for everything. Even for small stuff like an icecream. So now I carry a much smaller wallet, because I have no need to have cash on hand on a day-to-day basis. )
A card is less hassle than cash - and with no fee it is killing cash the same way the card killed cheques in the 1980's.
I am working for banking/retail companies processing their "detail" data for reporting data marts.
They like card payments as much as you like. Guess why.
For me cash is king for purchases that I do not want to impact my insurance or credit score. ..." (yes, opticsplanet.com hear this)
cash is also king for foreign transactions where sellers say "oh, we will not sell this to bloody foreigners
Remember Cyprus solution to financial crisis ... your money on the account are only zeroes and ones ... government can take them any time.
Can't get a regular job........
No benefits really sums !!
Live performance terminated at-will without cause, by definition a performance art. The Gig Economy is a one-time event all have witnessed, participated or enjoyed. Its real until it isn't. Work lasts a lifetime, real and business organized on the principle of it outlasting the life of its workforce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Services
Temp workers have been around since the 50s. I guess apps are cheaper to use than calling a person at a temp agency.
Only a millennial could be this naive. It's because the 'gig economy' could more aptly be termed 'the exploitation economy', it was always a an untenable joke, and anyone over 35 saw it immediately (the less scrupulous chose to exploit it for their own profit). You didn't invent anything. We used to call it 'freelancing', and it has always been a very difficult way to sustain anything resembling stability. Incidentally, hustling like that is a lot of fun in your 20s, not so much later in life when you require a truly solid foundation. That this question was asked at all tells us plenty about the maturity of the people involved. We are not making you supervisors anytime soon; no, you are all going to have to go back to the beginning and actually learn something this time.
As an experienced IT worker, I for one, would NEVER want any temp gig, instead of a steady/permanent job w/ steady/permanent wage & benefits!!!
There was times when I was desperately looking for a REAL JOB & seeing GIG advertisements, which, basically, said "come & train our employees & leave", or, said "come & finish a project & leave", were making me really really annoyed!!!
Because, they were asking so many years of experience & expertise on so many different subject, also!!!
IMHO, any such person needs to be a complete IDIOT to work for such jobs!!!
Nobody hires kids to do their lawn anymore, too much liability as if they get injured on your property their parents can sue you.
And as for that $30/hr, how much of that does the landscaper actually get to keep after all expenses are covered? It's no different as how being a consultant the rate that I am billed to the client is much higher than what my actual take-home salary is at the end.
The onus for providing benefits and worker's comp is put on the contractor instead of the contractee. If you wind up having an accident, tough. You are on your own to heal thyself and get another gig. No workers comp, that is if you don't get a DBA and a federal tax ID, declaring yourself as a company. Then guess what? You are a businessman operating a company, paying state and federal taxes, like it or no.
Oh, and if you want to retire, you have to plan one out yourself with help from a financial advisor. And pray the money flow stays constant.
Vacation? Who needs them? You are working to feed you and your family now. So you have to stay at it, pretty much all the hours you want to or have to be scheduled for? Long days and/or nights doing gigs. Oh, loads o fun.
So much for the advantages of the gig economy.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Because taxis and food delivery doesn't make up that much of the economy?
You pay $30 an hour, but for every hour of work there's another hour or more of searching for the work, making arrangements with you, and of course driving who knows how far to you and back. And then sometimes there's a middleman taking a cut too.
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tl;dr - people will not work for pocket change.
I get all my best ideas from researchers that use words like "nothingburger". Can't wait to see the new research on "Mickey D's", it'll be ridonkulous.
Don't forget equipment maintenance.
I hate euphemisms, and "gig worker" is just a euphemism for slave-wage day laborer. We've been down that path before, is this really what we want to go back to? Color me shocked that people are resistant to voluntarily opting into this!
Some people are hesitant to set up their own business because it's not quite as simple as it was when you're 12 and mowing lawns. Some jobs require insurance, which you pay for annually whether you work or not. Others require you to be incorporated. The quarterly filings aren't a big deal, but might scare some people off, but even after twenty years of doing so, prefer an accountant to do the annual filings and schedules. Soon as you do that, you run into $500-$1000/year expense and have equipment that needs to be expensed and depreciated. It's really not the same as mowing lawns.
The gig economy makes sense on a micro-economic model, which is why some people embrace it, but many models don't seem to understand that people live under those models. Economics works well when it's short term decision making, because markets can be efficient with a short-term perspective, but a long-term perspective is very difficult for humans to make efficient decisions.
Very few people can fully embrace gig work because of the instability, the crazy hours, the need for insurance, using your own assets like a car or a house, etc., and still make enough money to see an end to retirement.
I mean, that's the whole deal. In a traditional company, you come to work 5 days a week, you work with a few or a lot of people so you get some social interaction, you get health benefits and a 401k plan. At least on the surface and assuming a stable company, you just need to show up to work and do a good job and put some money away in the plan and you know that most unexpected turns life sends your way you can likely handle. A gig economy job is a near-term short term cash, but is not a long-term solution and every gig worker knows that.
It's also better for part time work, where you can pick up a contract whenever you want. Uber was supposed to be like this. Ride sharing whenever you had some time and a spare seat in your car. But too many people turned it into a way around cities cab regulations to become full time taxi drivers.
Have gnu, will travel.
Because running around, not having a schedule, not having insurance, constantly looking for work, is exhausting, and the people who had just entered the work forces when day laboring, sorry, I mean "Gig economy" started are tired of it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The gig economy is awesome if you're a kid with no bills for local work. The gig economy is awesome if you live in the third world for remote work.
It's not rocket science: you can't pay the bills in the US if you're earning $5 a day.
That said: if you rephrase the question to this:
Has the gig economy replaced traditional high school kid's jobs?
I'd argue that in this case, it's probably easier to get a gig job than it is to get a "real" part time job.
30 an hour? I'd love to get those prices.
My yard won't take a professional more the 30 minutes to do, and the cheapest I could find was 130 a week.
House keeping? 175 for 2 hours.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
to get out of paying unemployment, pay roll taxes, benefits and minimum wage. They did it to taxi drivers for ages but it used to be mostly immigrants and the occasional ex-con 7 years past his sentence.
It wasn't right when we did it to them, but expanding it into the economy as a whole is bad juju for the entire workforce. It puts downward pressure on everybody's wages.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I rather work the 40 hours to get a steady check and benefits.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
Because it's killing its workers.
Although back then it was called "Victorian working conditions" and it was shit and evil.
Arun Sundararajan is a hypocritical asshole - unless he's waking up every day wondering if he'll have any work to do at NYU Stern School of Business and is being paid the lowest possible wage the law will allow (because the free market will allow him to be charged to go to work - something that actually happened in Victorian days. You could be paid in company money which could only be spent in company shops).
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Be careful not to confuse the hourly rate you're paying as a customer with the hourly rate the worker is receiving. Even if they are self employed, working lawns carries several additional costs. e.g. Capital equipment (truck, trailer, mower, edger, etc.) and the maintenance on all those items, their time managing that maintenance, their time scheduling the work (and dealing with schedule changes), etc.
8 hours of pay is costing probably 12 hours of their time, which effectively brings their hourly rate from $30 down to $20. Now subtract expenses. I don't know exactly how much that would be but even if you estimate only $5/hr that brings them down to $15/hr which is only $31k/yr assuming they can work all year, which is not true for lawn care in most states.
If the kid gets sick for a few weeks, he'll lose those customers and that's okay. The kid's parents are providing food, housing, clothing, medical care and all the other necessities.
Most adults would quickly find themselves homeless with mounting medical debits in the same situation. Around 2/3 of the bankruptcies in the US are at least partly caused by medical costs.
So stuff your "they work 30 hours for the same money because their nervous about whether they can do the same thing that kids all over America do" right back where it came from. It's BS. They're nervous because the US doesn't provide the social safety net that the 12 year old has and failure as an adult means losing your place in society and, quite possibly, your life.
A purely emotional reason is that people are so nervous about having their own business - despite the fact they know many twelve year old kids mow lawns. They might personally know a 12 year old who mows 10 lawns every week for $300, yet they work 30 hours for the same money because their nervous about whether they can do the same thing that kids all over America do.
That 12 year old kid doesn't "own a business". Owning an actual business comes with tax an regulatory implications. You have to set up an LLC, pay both sides if FICA, arrange to pay yourself through the business, etc. Sure, it can be done. But it's not the same as some kid mowing lawns for spending money.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
30 an hour? I'd love to get those prices.
My yard won't take a professional more the 30 minutes to do, and the cheapest I could find was 130 a week.
House keeping? 175 for 2 hours.
Are those independent contractors? Those prices are ridiculously high. Nextdoor or your neighbors probably can recommend someone a little more reasonable.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Also, if you're doing everything above board, the guy doing gig work has to pay self employment taxes. As a W2 the employer would be responsible for half of your federal taxes; but as a gig worker you have to pay both halves. That 30/hr starts looking more like 10/hr very quickly once you factor all the typical expenses and taxes.
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Here in Los Angeles, you'll get undercut quickly by latinos who live for this shit. I watched the following happen over the past 15 years:
Buddy of mine's dad was working for a landscaper. He eventually bought a truck, his own gear, and started his own landscaping company, charging about 20% less than his employer. Eventually, he hired 2 helpers. After a few years, those helpers bought their own trucks and equipment and undercut him by 20%. And then those guys did well, hired people, who then did the same. Now my buddy's dad works for another landscaper because he got tired of trying to cut costs, maintain equipment, find reliable employees (showing up was easy, it was finding the guys that weren't trying to snake customers from him). Now he makes a little less, but peace of mind goes a long way. Now it's his boss's problem again.
If you want to see how gig economies really work, go hang out in India. There's no shortage of people willing to do just about anything at any time for peanuts.
And guess what? It sucks over there.
Owning an actual business comes with tax an regulatory implications. You have to set up an LLC, pay both sides if FICA, arrange to pay yourself through the business, etc
Sole proprietor here. No, you don't have to set up an LLC to have a business. And a 12 year old earning $300 per week is not going to be mowing all year and very unlikely to hit the $12,000 mark that requires them to file taxes, not even FICA.
Scratch that, it's a $400 minimum for self-employed people. There's probably no more tax fraud among kids than among adult business owners from what I've seen. People are always wanting to pay me in cash, thinking that I'm somehow not going to keep detailed records and not report income.
Does anyone else think this blog post is profoundly stupid????
Thank you for stating what should be obvious to each and all and why I think this /. posting is beyond pathetic and ignorant. Also, would recommend reading The Myth of Capitalism if you haven't read it yet (don't agree with all the authors' opinions, but do support their data!).
looney tunes, supported right-to-be-fired without any notice, etc.
I turned down both a full-time job and several contract jobs because I have two kids, one who had a serious medical condition at the time - proper group policy insurance was worth waiting for, even at lower take-home pay.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
A few people have answered this from the employees' perspective, but there's a much more obvious answer...
My projects at work are almost always multi-week, sometimes even taking the better part of a year. Just getting familiar with the systems my employer uses took me over a year, and that's already having been completely competent in the base platform and proficient at the tools and languages involved in doing the actual work.
The "gig" economy is great for situations where "probably" is good enough and the work is low-to-no-skill. If one Uber driver doesn't show up, it just means you wait two extra minutes for the next one. If one day-laborer is sick today, there's 20 others to pick from in the Home Depot parking lot. And even then, that doesn't always work - If the ship or railcar doesn't get unloaded, you're paying demurrage. If the checkout lines aren't adequately staffed, people start abandoning full carts and walking out.
Not everything can be a "gig". If an employer needs either highly skilled labor, or a guaranteed minimum number of bodies present - Not a gig.
Doing gigs you don't know if you'll make $400 this week or $550. People like consistency so much they prefer to know they'll make $400 working at the mall.
You mean that doing gigs you don't know if you'll make $400 this week or $0.
its not purely emotional and in some times is logical basked on the risk of not making anything at all. I applaud your drive to help people but please understand that the reason that people choose regular low paying work over gig work is quite often logical and risk based. If that person has children then they will usually not go to the gig economy because the risk of not being able to feed their child and the consequences are huge. I encourage you to give up everything you own and then try and survive on the gig economy. You will get a greater appreciation for why so many people choose to have regular jobs that pay less, being able to budget is huge and very hard to do if you don't know when your next gig is going to be or even if you are going to get one.
Ive lived on both sides of this equation and i can tell you that the gig economy only makes sense as a secondary source of income or if you are single with no dependents, or other responsibilities.
giggity
I was just talking to a floor repair specialist, he said he works 80+ hour weeks sometimes because he never knows when a zero hour week will come along. I wondered at the time if I could ever handle that sort of uncertainty.
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If you save the extra money during good weeks, spending only what you make ON AVERAGE, you can quickly have three months of expenses saved and then you're not so scared about bad weeks.
This simple, but not easy.
Funny thing about that is the going rate for someone to cut your grass or clean your house is about $30/hour here in Dallas.
Just asked relative in Dallas. One word reply 'Bullshit' to $30/hr.
Relative says less than $15/hr is more typical.
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Well I have several joba that need done. I'll pay $25/hour. :)
Well, let's see.
$30/hr
30 hrs/week (allowing for 10 hours a week of lining up more work)
25 weeks/year (6 months * 4 weeks/month is a slight underestimate, but it'll do)
30*30*25 = $22,500
FICA + Medicare + federal taxes on that amount to $4250, so your take-home is $18250.
In this example, you're working approximately 1000 hours, so you're making $18.25/hr.
I'm not sure about equipment and maintenance costs. Even assuming the mower is free, you'll still pay for gas - costing nearly $2000 if your mower uses 1 gallon per hour at ~$2.50/gallon.
$10/hr is a lowball estimate, but it's not far off -- $15-16/hr after taxes and expenses is in the right ballpark.
Funny to hear the Gig Economy gospel from Mr. Sundararajan, a tenured university professor with all the benefits that regular employment can bring, along with the job security that few jobs can offer.
Maybe he should leave the ivory tower and try living out the precarious work life he preaches.
Consult deez nuts
Funny thing about that is the going rate for someone to cut your grass or clean your house is about $30/hour here in Dallas.
I asked a relative in Dallas. The response to $30/hr was one word: 'bullshit'. $15/hr is apparently on the high side.
For those using the owner's (of the lawn) equipment somewhat under $15/hr is typical according to my people in Dallas.
In other words Raymorris's post becomes 'Why would you work for someone for $12/hr, possibly with health care as compared to very slightly more, net, with all the attendant risks and no health coverage?'
Those are unusually high rates unless you live somewhere where the cost of living is high.
If they know ANYONE who will do it for $15/hour, I have a house that needs cleaned, a lawn that needs mowed, a pool needs painting, lots of stuff. Send them my way! I'll gladly pay $20/hour, assuming they aren't a crackhead.
It's all about risk. A kid does it because he has nothing to lose if it doesn't work out.
In the rat race most rats just wanna ride the train.
I should shift to usa. Id mow the shit out of everyones lawn.
My own house pays usd20/4 hr to a maid to clean the house weekly.
I worked in a country that had live in maids at 200 usd / month (~10 hrs work a day)
If the kid gets sick for a few weeks, he'll lose those customers and that's okay. The kid's parents are providing food, housing, clothing, medical care and all the other necessities.
Most adults would quickly find themselves homeless with mounting medical debits in the same situation.
As far as my understanding of the US system goes, this would happen to the employed adult, too.
bickerdyke