Why Hasn't The Gig Economy Killed Traditional Work? (npr.org) 170
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 gig work sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
get paid when you want (Score:1)
I'd rather get paid all the time and slack off when I want than only get paid when I actually work
Also.... Desperation... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
This was my experience between 1999 and 2014... (Score:2, Insightful)
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
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A lot of that is very true.
I mean when you sell SLAs you know you will only keep if nothing bad happens... Sure, it's a business decision but I find that dishonest already. It's so rare to receive good and honest service. Most of the time you get fleeced in some manner.
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Remove the requirement for employer healthcare for anyone over 30 hours and you'll see people quit the gig jobs when they can get more hours at a primary job.
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The requirement for >30 hrs requiring insurance is only for companies with >50 employees. Do you have any idea how much revenue a company with 50+ employees has? They cam afford it.
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The worst part about it is that this hit the people who were worst off since almost everyone in a skilled position was already getting health care and working 40 hours per week. Nothing changed as far as they were concerned. Instead it was the
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The requirement for >30 hrs requiring insurance is only for companies with >50 employees. Do you have any idea how much revenue a company with 50+ employees has? They cam afford it.
Maybe not. In my state, the Democratic government issued an executive order stating that NO part-time employee could work more than 25 hours per week. The sole purpose was to avoid putting those employees into the health care system.
If a state government is trying to save money doing that, I would expect most business to do the same.
$30/hour low-skill jobs. People like consistency (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:$30/hour low-skill jobs. People like consistenc (Score:4, Insightful)
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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Don't forget equipment maintenance.
Re:$30/hour low-skill jobs. People like consistenc (Score:4, Interesting)
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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
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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.
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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.
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Re:$30/hour low-skill jobs. People like consistenc (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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 Ameri
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Remove uncertainty by saving (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
I have house needs cleaning if they know ANYONE (Score:2)
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.
Tell them to call me for $25/hour (Score:2)
Well I have several joba that need done. I'll pay $25/hour. :)
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Your grocery company in central USA represents every gig worker in the nation? wow.
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Yup. Add to this:
- You're competing against jurisdictions that have strong laws about workers' rights and unfair contracts.
- The lowering of transaction costs that the Internet represents is something that all businesses are taking advantage of, not just gig brokers.
- Some of the high profile "gig economy" platforms are running at a loss.
- The last tech bubble burst hard and ordinary people haven't forgotten.
Let me take a wild guess (Score:1)
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.
That is easy (Score:1, Interesting)
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 beca
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Sort of true, but I'd suggest this is only one side of it and the reason is a little different.
As a company it is attractive to hire resource as and when you need it. You can scale easily, it avoids longer term commitments especially in markets like the EU where labour protections are strong etc. However, if doing the work effectively requires knowledge of the organisation or practices that takes considerable time to pick up then havi
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As a company it is attractive to hire resource as and when you need it. You can scale easily, it avoids longer term commitments especially in markets like the EU where labour protections are strong etc. However, if doing the work effectively requires knowledge of the organisation or practices that takes considerable time to pick up then having a stable longer term workforce has a considerable advantage.
At a micro level, what job doesn't? Driving an Uber/package delivery is pretty much the only thing you're already more or less qualified for having a driver's license. I mean could you imagine running even a McDonald's on a gig basis, with people randomly showing up to work an hour? No. You need predictability and a rotation, even though you could probably quite easily get someone new into the system. You could say it's better designed for asynchronous work like rent-a-coder, but the transaction overhead fo
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Why can't you? Uber only requires 1 drive a month and the driver app has 'destination mode' for you to reach a destination while taking rides.
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Re:Duh. People buy bread every day (Score:5, Interesting)
Employment based around desperation isn't good thing in the long term, for either party. I think what we saw was a spike in desperation at the same time these services became technically and socially feasible. How big it is will vary year to year with the bubbles and fickleness inherent in the free market. Hypeman economists like Sundararajan will have their heads going in circles trying to make sense of it.
I think it's helpful in understanding to avoid buzzwords like "gig economy" altogether. These kind of buzzwords are loaded up with an entire narrative that makes it mentally easy for you to forget context and history, being swept up in the hype. The facts become harder to actually integrate into your worldview. Keep history and context in mind, and it's clear the "gig economy" is more evolution than revolution. You're fixed on this image of a bedraggled hipster, that is the detritus of Sundararajan's investment hype. The reality is more... real. Normal people wanting the same things they always have.
in Soviet Russia ... (Score:1)
... traditional work kills YOU!
There is no "gig economy" (Score:1)
"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.
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It's misused. I've seen a number of so-called professionals who did a second job while logged in from their current workplace, using their primary employer's laptops and networks to reach out to their "gig" or part-time contract work. I became particularly concerned when these employers did work behind my back on the same system I was doing formally contracted, scheduled work on without notification and disrupted the admin privileged tasks I was doing, especially including reboots.
That particular contract w
gig economy is there but (Score:5, Informative)
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
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I do these things enough without being self-employed, thank you very much.
Also I hate dealing with customers...
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Contacting tends to pay better but has a negative effect on your ability to get credit. When you try to get a mortgage the bank sees people on short contracts as a higher risk.
For that reason a lot of people switch to salary when they need to buy a house.
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I spent 20+ years as a self employed software engineer. I finally had enough of never truly being free of my work and got regular employment. I have never looked back. I make about a third of the money but the freedom! It is worth every penny lost to be able to really have time off. To take a six week vacation! Call in sick when you have the flu instead of working.
Life as an employee is good!
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Software contracts aren't gig economy. That's not what it means.
Gig comes from entertainment, where it's night by night.
Contracting work is far better then gig economy.
You want to include every person who has a contract? Well the it's meaningless term then because baseball players making 10s of millions, doctors making 600K a year, and lyft drivers would all be in the same category, rendering it meaningless.
It was created specifically for Uber/lyft/day labor type of work that sprung up to supplement people
Look at who's writing the stories; (Score:4, Interesting)
"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"??
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Universities always had temporary positions like that. Some professor goes on a sabattical or a big research project, a temp steps in and does his classes for a year. Nobody wants to work like that, so it is usually some post-doc who haven't yet landed anything better.
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Your point is cogent, but universities overall are down to about 20% tenure track vs 80% adjunct (gig worker) faculty, and NYU in particular has whole categories of non-permanent faculty positions that even the adjunct-heavy schools don't use.
Yeah, the way tenured Milton Friedman, that (Score:2)
People like money (Score:2)
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.
Contractors (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Obvious answer (Score:1)
> Why Hasn't The Gig Economy Killed Traditional Work?
Because there's still a demand for traditional work. Next.
Maybe the gig economy hasn't taken off because (Score:5, Insightful)
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"
A thousand thanks (Score:3)
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Because the workers needed to make the Gig Economy (TM) haven't embraced it?
Except that here in Washington State, they tried to push a bunch of self employed people out of that category and into being employees. And these people went to the state capital and screamed about how their lives would be ruined by losing control of their own work. And the state gave up the effort.
WTF is "Gig Economy"? Cloud, blockchain and ... (Score:2)
... 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
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That accepts some trending cyber currency.
That will sell as an impulse purchase on a few digital distribution platforms.
Because the GUI and keywords and price and its an app and gig economy and smartphone and cyber currency and
Its like shareware or a hypercard stack was but it only does a simple math related task.
By a person learning to code from an ebook about smartphone apps.
Ignoring The Boomer Factor (Score:1)
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.
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Unless of course more people start using those places as they get richer. I mean I prefer using websites if possible, but a lot of them seemed determined to make my life as miserable as possible through the awesome power of JavaScript. It's kind of impressive that they can over come my innate desire to not deal with actual people, but there you go.
I've found as I've advanced in my career, got paid a bit more and have less tube that there's value in being able to chuck some money at something and have it don
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I've found as I've advanced in my career, got paid a bit more and have less tube
Sorry to hear about your tube shrinkage. Perhaps you could contact one of the entrepreneurs that are always sending me mail about increasing the size of my tube and get that issue addressed.
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I wonder if anyone from O'Reilly reads this site?
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well-off baby people.
I just had a relative pass. She married into money in the 50s.
Her funeral had people, across every generation starting in 1930. None of the one with money do shit for themselves.
It's funny how you mention travel agents. I thought they were gone until 2 weeks ago when some 20 year old is talking about havng his travel agent do some books.
I thought he was kidding. Nope, it turns out he and his friend prefer to do that.
So, to sum up: People with money prefer other people to do work.
It's slowing because... (Score:4, Interesting)
...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.
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So, companies got off not paying their fair share of
That's the responsibility of the contractor, not the client company.
name change for the improved public image (Score:1)
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.
Because in many scenarios, "traditional work" ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... is more efficient.
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... 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".
Re:Because in many scenarios, "traditional work" . (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
software has always been a service (Score:3)
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.
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"it works". That is the lowest level of readiness of the software.
1000 times Yes!
Gig Economy == Manchester Capitalism (Score:2)
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.
Because itâ(TM)s nothing new (Score:1)
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.
shit (Score:2)
There are liability issues (Score:2)
There are liability issues
Gig economy is profitable for the platform ... (Score:2)
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
Gig definition: (Score:2)
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.
Gig Economy's don't work as well. (Score:2)
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.
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gig economy is fore the childless. Why people who make less then a steady 50K have children will always be baffling to me. It's literally worse for the parent, and the child.
So goddamn selfish.
Oh, I answered my own question!
For the records, I have 2 kids. I didn't have the first one until I was making 70k+
I hate euphemisms... (Score:4)
Gig work ... (Score:2)
It's also better for part time work
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That's contracting, not gig economy.
That's like saying my 6 month software engineering contracts are 'gig ' economy, but that's not what it means at all.
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That's like saying my 6 month software engineering contracts are 'gig ' economy
But that's how many of the commenters are using the term. And since there is no legal distinction between being a self-employed contractor and a gig worker, its the same thing.
People are tired. (Score:2)
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.
Because it's a scam (Score:3)
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.
No steady income/benefits (Score:2)
Answer (Score:2)
Because it's killing its workers.
We fought hard to get rid of the gig economy (Score:3)
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).
Question to the crowd . . . (Score:2)
Because institutional knowledge is still a thing. (Score:2)
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 an
Do as I say... (Score:1)
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.
Re: Temp workers have been around since the 50s. (Score:1)