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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.
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
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.
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.