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Most US jobs created since 2005 are not conventional full-time work
- csours 9y ago> “We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” So, not exactly temp workers, but contract workers who require less overhead and are easy to fire.
- jstanley 9y agoPeople talk like this is a bad thing, but I don't get it. If working for your employer became a negative ROI, you'd quit your job. If employing somebody becomes a negative ROI, I don't see why it shouldn't be equally easy to stop employing them. As long as the relationship is mutually beneficial, neither party will terminate it.
- Danihan 9y agoIt's a bad thing that the demographics of the US are now such that this has happened... that most employee / employer relationships are no longer mutually beneficial.
- lmm 9y agoMost employers can adapt to the loss of a single worker much more easily than a worker can adapt to losing their job. And much of our social safety net currently operates via employers - things like pensions, maternity leave, healthcare, and even unemployment are tightly coupled to the single-long-term-employer model. Maybe they shouldn't be, but fixing that will take time and in the meantime people will slip through the cracks.
- killjoywashere 9y agoWe're stuffing people into cracks and making new cracks to stuff them in.
- pjc50 9y agoThe employee is usually in a much more precarious situation, and usually more concerned with cashflow than ROI.
- arebop 9y agoIt's bad because the overwhelming majority of people don't enjoy the process of finding a new job and cannot afford to spend time finding new work. I think a lot of the talk is also due to unhappiness with the economic trend that is drawing the median and minimum incomes closer together, which is a reversal of a trend that gave widespread optimism and contentment.
- kmm 9y agoBecause of the massive imbalance of power between employer and employee. Which is why employment protection is a lot stronger in every other developed country than the US.
- dvdhnt 9y agoMost people can’t just quit their job, they have monthly recurring bills that must be paid. Those of us that work in tech are quite fortunate to have realistic alternatives. However, even many of us are restricted due to location, and before it’s mentioned, yeah we could move but we have families with children in school and spouses who have non tech careers. Moving is expensive. The employment system in the US, especially in states like mine, ensure that employers have persistent power over employees under the guise of “right to work”.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago>The employment system in the US, especially in states like mine, ensure that employers have persistent power over employees under the guise of “right to work”. I think you mean "at-will employment". All American states have that. "Right to work" laws refer to laws banning union contracts from creating "closed shops".
- dvdhnt 9y agoYep, I did mean "at-will". Thank you!
- jeffdavis 9y agoWorkers are usually more efficient when they concentrate on one job full time. But that leaves them exposed to any disruption of that one job. Also, many employers expect contractors to be always available, or available full time for long stretches, but that makes it impossible to diversify their income. So it can become very one-sided. A possible answer would be to make it normal for employees to have contracts with several employers at once, but that can create conflicts of interest in a lot of professions, and would make things like IP very messy.
- s73ver_ 9y agoBecause we don't like looking at people as purely numbers. Especially when those people are dependent upon their job to be able to pay rent and buy food.
- notsohugedeal22 9y agoExactly why we need universal healthcare in the US It’s something every worker should be fighting tooth and nail for It would go a long way to breaking up the neoliberal corporate hegemony Sadly, and regardless of education and political leanings, Americans seem in love with a fictional account of the countries history. That it was all great 50 yrs ago without universal healthcare (when they were kids and not really paying attention) so of course it’s just fine to keep it that way. I encounter people of all ages and backgrounds with that notion kicking about, every day. Having lived and traveled the world, Americans are unique in their ignorance that the world was just as corrupt a generation ago. Now let’s go watch some TVLand and chill
- Crontab 9y ago> Exactly why we need universal healthcare in the US I agree but the political will to do it is just not there. Not yet, anyway.
- leggomylibro 9y agoWe need more than universal healthcare; we need straight-up universal care. The idea should be that periods of unemployment or uncertainty are not terrifying gray areas for an average person. If people felt comfortable that they would have support for finding better pastures from a shitty job, they'd be more likely to seek them. If they felt more confident that they had prospects after a layoff, they'd be more likely to look for alternate employment instead of sitting around in an abandoned factory town as it rots to the ground around them. I think it comes down to the fact that risk-taking cannot be a luxury, if we want the United States to remain a competitive and dynamic society. "Party of jobs?" How about a party for workers? After all, as many conservatives will happily tell you, true value comes from the heads, the hearts, and the hands of individuals. Why are we giving so much free stuff to Big Jobernment?
- Aloha 9y agoWe need guaranteed minimum income, its the most freedom enhancing way of solving these problems. Give people cash, give them financial literacy training, the rest ought to work out okay.
- goodoldboys 9y agoPretty much. I fit into this category and my anecdotal experience tells me that hiring managers favor contractors for that reason as well as the fact that the money to pay them sometimes is listed as a different line-item on the budget. I think the combination of the two helps as well - when looking at a large contractor line-item, knowing that it can be scaled back with less headache than a Full Time Employee (FTE) makes it easier to stomach I think. If you're comfortable with hustling for work when the time comes, then contracting can be a much better arrangement. I work from home, basically whenever I want, and I make more money than I would as a FTE (even when factoring in the outrageous cost of health insurance these days). The biggest thing I think is the mental shift. As a FTE, there's a stronger sense of job security. But really, layoffs happen all the time and as a FTE I feel like I'd be less prepared to find another job, whereas being a contractor means I have to constantly be thinking about the future. Pick your poison I guess.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- walshemj 9y agoIts not well paid IT contractors its all the minimum wage disguised employment "gig" jobs that is where the growth is.
- armenarmen 9y agoYeah, and these gigs aren't the best thing around for sure. But I wonder where people would be without them, you know? Would it be huge unemployment? Or would conventional employees be the result?
- anonymous5133 9y agoReally depends. If you think about uber then without uber or similar services then people would use taxis. The taxi drivers would get paid more due to having monopolies in most cities and fares would be outrageous. Most of the gig type companies are able to offer lower prices to consumers at the expense of workers. Also important to note is that uber and lyft sell their gigs as just side income, not a full time job so I think people have been fair warned that uber is not sufficient to support yourself.
- bryan11 9y agoHas the increasing cost of health insurance motivated employers to start using more contract workers?
- thaumaturgy 9y agoEmployers have been operating without any sense of social responsibility since long before health care became a part of the national conversation. You could entirely remove any obligation of providing health insurance from all employers, and they'd still replace payrolled employees with contract workers if it saved them a buck.
- downrightmike 9y agoIf it saved them a cent.
- lazerpants 9y agoProbably. Do employers pay payroll tax on independent contractors? Those two items together make FTEs really expensive.
- anonymous5133 9y agoThere is no requirement to withhold taxes on independent contractors. The independent contractor is fully liable for all payroll obligations. If you are a direct employee then the employer will pay half of your payroll tax (7.5%). If you are an independent contractor then you pay the full tax of 15%. However, independent contractors are not without risk because the independent contractor is suppose to operate fully independent without your supervision. If you violate certain guidelines then you have to classify the worker as an employee which entitles them to certain rights.
- prklmn 9y agoPotentially. But now more than ever, companies with little to no revenue growth don't know how to boost earnings aside from cutting costs.
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- Crontab 9y agoThat is why the US government itself likes contractors - it allows them to avoid dealing with the Civil Service.
- ThomPete 9y agoYup. I have been saying this for a couple of years now and which is why I am a firm believer that automation and digitalization are some of the biggest challenges for society although I am a proponent of both.
- jsloss 9y agoPublished Dec 2016 ...
- notfromhere 9y agoThat's very recent for economic stats
- jsloss 9y agoAh, right. Good point.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoThis is in large part because the sectors that saw the largest move towards alternative work arrangements—like education and medicine—have a high proportion of women. Anyone know more about this? What jobs in those areas are becoming contract based?
- csours 9y agoMy little sister is a physical therapist assistant (usually the person actually administering physical therapy), and a lot of her jobs have been contract based.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoAh, I didn't realize those jobs were starting to turn!
- ianai 9y agoLecturers and nurses, as a guess. I know a CEO of a nursing staffing agency. I imagine she contracts nurses out. In both cases contracts would let businesses treat shift hours as more isolated needs. That grants them lots of flexibility.
- InitialLastName 9y agoA female relative of mine is a occupational therapist (registered). Over the last 15 years, she's had a series of full time jobs in facilities (mostly retirement care) that each eventually converted into contract-based work, mostly as the facilities consolidated into umbrella companies. In each case, the working conditions have deteriorated to the point where she has been driven to find a new job, but the sense I get is that finding non-contractor work in that field at this point is getting asymptotically more difficult (at least in the mid-Atlantic US).
- lkrubner 9y agoAnother powerful demographic force in the USA is the number of men who are ex-convicts: ""Few of us today are aware of the staggering size of this group. In a forthcoming study, Sarah Shannon, a sociologist at the University of Georgia, and five colleagues estimate that America’s criminal class (people with a felony conviction or prison time in their background) roughly quadrupled between 1980 and 2010 — from 5 million to nearly 20 million. Given the flow of sentencing since then, we might expect that population to have topped 23 million by now. And since roughly two and a half million people are behind bars today, this means that 20 million released felons and ex-prisoners are living outside institutions. This implies that at least one in eight adult men in the at-large population has been sentenced for a felony. And the ratio for prime-age men could be even higher, given the upsurge of sentencing in recent decades." http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2017/10/after-incarceration-how-and-male-labor.html http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2017/10/after-incar...
- jstanley 9y ago> This implies that at least one in eight adult men in the at-large population has been sentenced for a felony. That's an astounding statistic. I don't live in America, and I obviously don't run into a perfectly uniform sampling of society, but I'd guess way less than 1 in 8 people I meet have done something that deserves being thrown in prison.
- gilrain 9y agoNot that many people have done something that deserves being thrown in prison in the US, either. We're just far too happy to throw people in for things that don't deserve it, like non-violent drug offenses.
- gehwartzen 9y agoThe other issue is that many companies juts have blanket bans against hiring a 'felon'; doesn't matter if it was murdering a family or stealing a TV
- techiferous 9y ago
- adventured 9y agoIn the time since the end of the article's data was sourced, until now, the U6 rate has fallen from 11% to 8.3% - which is back to where it was in the Summer of 1998. When it gets into the 7.x% levels, the employment market will be the second hottest in roughly 50 years next to the year 2000. The time frame sourced, includes an U6 rate that reached nearly 18% and a U3 rate that hit 10%. It's not surprising that conventional full-time work numbers would be severely distorted both by the great recession and the recovery period. The actual labor force reality is the US is facing a severe shortage of labor due to extremely slow population growth (and that assumes a big hit from inbound automation; if that's not as big as forecast, the shortage will be that much worse). The US added $4.x trillion to its economy in the last ten years (despite the great recession), roughly the size of Germany's economy of 82 million people. It accomplished that while adding only 22 million people. Without a leap in automation, ie productivity gains, there's no way to keep matching that economic expansion in the next 10 and 20 years as population growth slows even further.
- aantix 9y agoI wonder if that added productivity comes from the rise of smart phones and being able to be connected all the time?
- walshemj 9y agodepends how they fiddle th figure I though 3 or 4 % was the full employment rate
- gwright 9y agoI'm no expert but I think the 3/4% is relative to the U3 statistic and and not the U6 statistic mentioned above. http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp
- s73ver_ 9y agoDifferent stats depending on how you determine that someone is "unemployed". Some count anyone who doesn't have a job at all unemployed, while some will take that number, and remove people who wouldn't be part of the workforce anyway, like retired persons, stay at home parents, and students. And there's a few in between.
- WalterBright 9y agoIt's unsurprising considering the increasing costs and regulations imposed upon full time workers. When you see figures on what workers are paid, the figure should be "total compensation", which includes things like benefits, FICA taxes paid on behalf of the employee, etc. These can easily add 50% to the compensation. Showing just the wage is disingenuous.
- Aloha 9y agoCan you give some examples of what these costs are and how they've increased since 2005 (or 1995)?
- woolvalley 9y agoWell everyone's health insurance premiums have gone up by quite a bit.
- WalterBright 9y ago1. Employer's FICA contribution 2. Vacation paid time off 3. Sick leave paid time off 4. Maternity/Paternity paid time off 5. health care benefits 6. free/subsidized lunch 7. free bus passes 8. 401k employer matching contribution 9. employee stock purchase plans 10. stock options 11. bonuses 12. profit sharing / commissions 13. retirement plan 14. education tuition help 15. random other things like gym memberships, legal help, etc. Here's some of Boeing's benefits: http://www.boeing.com/careers/benefits/united-states-benefits.page http://www.boeing.com/careers/benefits/united-states-benefit... Some statistics: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm
- zzalpha 9y agoROFL, wow, talk about cherry-picking to make a case... The fact is the US offers the least PTO of any developed nation. Same goes with sick leave and mat/pat leave. And free lunch? Free bus passes? Stock and option plans, profit sharing, educiation/tuition, retirement, gym memberships... HA! I know this is shocking, but: most of the world isn't SV. Those benefits are fantasies for the vast majority of American salaried employees. Many people I know live with 2 weeks of combined PTO, 3 months of maternity leave (mandated by law... ish... there's a bunch of exclusions) and no paternity leave whatsoever, basic health care, and a 401k match if they're lucky. Now, I'm not claiming that a salaried employee isn't more expensive than a contract employee. That's objectively true. And in a very real sense, the entire point and why this trend is alarming: the more people pushed to underemployement (part-time or contract work), the more people who don't realize those additional benefits, thus contributing to the ongoing demolition of the middle class. But the US workplace is hideously behind the rest of the western world, and is still managing to lead the way in underemployment as well. After a while you really gotta wonder why that is...
- ryanmarsh 9y agoThis report from GAO[1] published in 2015, referenced in the report, referenced in TFA (whew), is very eye opening and worth a read. It states very clearly how the economy is changing. Public policy will need to adapt to this new environment. Also, this is just the beginning of a massive shift in work that was predicted as far back as the Regan administration. 1: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-168R http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-168R
- Mz 9y agoI actually consider this to be good news overall. We do need to keep an eye on structuring things such that gig workers have the ability to grow real careers and have positive experiences (wrt adequate income and quality of life in terms of control over their time etc). We need to make sure these aren't structured in a fuck you way. But, I do gig work and it was a huge saving grace while extremely ill and homeless. It allowed me to develop an income and eventually get off the street.
- dmix 9y agoExcept that the go-to solution to every industry problems has been (and continues to be) to regulate it centrally with some agency or shut it down when that doesn't make sense, which in reality only works for a big-company full time salary job oriented economy. Instead of strengthening property laws and other personal liability protections, aka the type of recourses available to contractors, and/or simply offering traditional services and protections to everyone, not just full-time employee or those who meet a byzantine list of special conditions. Instead of trying to fix these out-of-date legacy systems, a legal and regulatory system designed for a previous generation, everyone seems to want to attack the 'gig economy' and Silicon Valley as some purposefully exploitative entity, as if this is why Uber came into existence. Rather than a natural evolution of the workplace in a high-tech economy. My favourite are those pushing the idea that unions are the missing piece of the puzzle in 2017.
- alphonsegaston 9y agoInstead of understanding the history of labor force exploitation in the United States, everyone wants to pretend that a high-tech gloss over a return to Gilded Age-style Robber barons is a “natural evolution.” Tech workers survive in comfort within the last remaining vestiges of benefits that union members fought and died to obtain. The gig economy is just what they called “piecework” a century ago.
- dmix 9y agoYou can make all of the correlations to historical trendlines you like but this is a new phenomenon with plenty of benefits to both the customer and workers compared to previous systems, which is why it exists, almost entirely as a result of technology. It's been disruptive and sudden largely due to a complete lack of innovation within existing systems, a possibly inherently feature of previous models. Not driven by some malicious intent of some nerds in California, as the common narratives like to push. That doesn't mean it's not flawed either, all new systems have growing pains. But more importantly, ignoring how it fits into academic economic history, it's not going away any time soon and we're not going back to an economy where big companies + union model makes sense again merely because our legal/regulatory system was previously designed for that. They say the political right is the one obsessed with pining for the old days in the US but I see it just as much nostalgia coming from the left. And it does little to help people solve the problems they have today and, likely more so, in the future.
- alkonaut 9y agoYou'd think that where workers are easy to fire such as in the US, there would be less incentive to use contractors over employees, than in places with very rigid rules for firing.
- munificent 9y agoFull-time employees have to be provided healthcare and benefits. Contractors do not.
- alkonaut 9y agoThat sure weighs in the other direction. But presumably no contractor or other non-employee would (should) work for less cost to the employer since they still have to fund pensions, healthcare etc? I'm guessing that the situation is that in some sectors there are people now working as "contractors" for the same type of money they would be making as employees - but without benefits. So it's a good thing at least that all this translates to fantastic growth which ultimately trickles down... /s
- williamscales 9y agoMaybe there is less incentive to use contractors than in a country with really rigid laws, like France say. These data just show that there is still an incentive to use contractors over employees which is very interesting.