17 ms·

Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

225 points by oli5679 8y ago

oli5679 8y ago
Reminds me of the economist Robert Solow's quip: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
- lkrubner 8y ago
  This is a good comment. It is interesting to consider how much rhetoric there is about robots and AI and Machine Learning and how these technologies can revolutionize work and lead to big productivity gains. And yet, in reality, the economy shows no sign of this. Productivity growth was very strong in the mid-20th century, but since 1973 productivity growth has been stagnant.
  - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    Because all the competitors are doing it, too.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      This is nonsense. The inflation-adjusted cost of producing one can of beer would be a pretty standard measure of productivity (in the beer industry). It can rise and fall completely independently of whether beer companies all use the same strategies or all use unique strategies.
  - kjeetgill 8y ago
    I don't know much about the subject. How do we measure productivity? What units do we use? I ask because it _feels_ like everything has changed since 1973 at least. So I'm curious where my intuition differs from reality.
    - throwawayjava 8y ago
      > How do we measure productivity? Productivity as typically reported is a statistic called "Total Factor Productivity" (TFP). Here's how it's calculated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_factor_productivity#Calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_factor_productivity#Calc... > What units do we use? TFP is unitless.
  - taurath 8y ago
    Call centers, accounting, and help desk and other things that used to take a small army are now a subscription service for far less money. The “efficiency” rating is probably wrong if it doesn’t think that’s increased efficiency.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    Productivity has been stagnant, or productivity growth has been stagnant? Constant productivity growth is a terrible argument that computers haven't contributed to productivity. No single innovation, however broadly defined, will produce constant growth. As one source of growth peters out, another one picks up.
  - state_less 8y ago
    AI and Machine Learning are newer, and probably have plenty of productivity gains to point to, but the thing that comes to mind for me is the amount of CAD and computer analysis that goes into our products these days. You can make a car that lasts twice as long and is more aerodynamic. Musk's rockets use computers for design and algorithms to land. The down stream effect is new satellites with more bandwidth (e.g. Iridium). In the end, a designer can make a product people get more use out of.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > Productivity growth was very strong in the mid-20th century, but since 1973 productivity growth has been stagnant. That's not true; the first decade of the 2000s rivaled the post-war era in terms of TFP growth: https://www.bls.gov/lpc/nfbbar.gif https://www.bls.gov/lpc/nfbbar.gif Even Brynjolfsson's ultimate thesis was not that "computers don't induce growth in TFP", but rather that "computers and business practices need to converge in order for computers to have an effect on TFP".
  - jpao79 8y ago
    Reminds me of this article: Google and Facebook contribute zero economic value. That's a big problem for trade. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/10/24/google-and-facebook-contribute-zero-economic-value-thats-a-big-problem-for-trade/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/10/2...
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      Really, 0 economic value. Nobody gets anything of value from using those services, its just wasted time.
      - flomble 8y ago
        The linked article is about how despite those services obviously having value to their users, they aren't accounted for in economic statistics, e.g. in measuring productivity, because they are "free" (i.e. paid for by subjecting oneself to advertising/tracking).
        conanbatt 8y ago
        I am suspect of this being true because GDP is measured in several ways, and you can measure the contribution of tech companies through their salaries and profits or through their expenditures and sales to ads. (i.e. their contribution to GDPcan be measured in their revenue) But this is also a red-herring, its at most an accounting issue, not a real economy issue.
  - hoschicz 8y ago
    Changes in GDP are caused either by debt or by productivity increases. Productivity growth since 1973 has _not_ been stagnant.
    - lkrubner 8y ago
      Labor productivity since 1973 has been much lower than in the decades before 1973: https://qz.com/633080/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-productivity-growth/ https://qz.com/633080/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-producti...
- justin 8y ago
  Maybe productivity metrics aren't a perfect measure of society. On many qualitative dimensions we have a much higher quality of living now because of computers: You can talk to anyone almost anywhere in the world for free, instantly. You can recall any information or media instantly. The list goes on..
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    Continuing the beer theme of my sidethread comment, I read a piece years ago making the point that the then-current explosion of microbreweries looked like a productivity disaster -- microbreweries produce a gallon of beer for a much higher cost than Anheuser-Busch does, so when an economist working with national-level data divides "beer produced in 2011" by "dollars spent producing beer in 2011", it looks like beer productivity has cratered compared to the golden age of the 1950s. In reality, of course, a can of Budweiser is cheaper than ever (productivity is up) while the populace has become so rich that it's voluntarily spending extra money on what it perceives as higher-quality beer. But there is no conceptual place for this in "beer" productivity statistics.
    - menacingly 8y ago
      This is great, it's one of those ideas I'll come back to later and think about again, applying to different stuff. Economics is such a tragedy, because on the one hand it's so elegant and satisfying, but on the other it seems sufficiently incomplete to be considered broken. Maybe it's the newtonian version of something.
      - xapata 8y ago
        You mean current methods will be replaced by more nuanced and accurate methods. Not that economics will be replaced. That'd be like physics being replaced instead of the methods changing. Newtonian methods had known flaws before relativity replaced them and quantum mechanics expanded that. Current economic methods also have known flaws. We're just waiting for Einstein.
- vkou 8y ago
  And yet, secretaries have been replaced by e-mail and calendars, human computers have been replaced by Excel, and armies of bean-counters have been replaced by business CMS systems that cost one fifth as much to maintain. People who used to do those jobs are now making lattes and avocado toast.
- uri93nd83 8y ago
  What magical new inventions is he thinking we should produce? There’s plenty of demand for healthcare services and infra, but no social will to force the political will to fund it Everyone has an opinion about how the rest of the world isn’t doing what they think it should, given some high level abstract view Few offer concrete ideas
- gaius 8y ago
  This is nonsense because anyone can see that the technology facilitated outsourcing and offshoring and logistics. The productivity that should have been in the old industrial heartlands happened - it just happened in China instead.
danschumann 8y ago
People(most people) like to do the same thing every day. Even me, I'm a programmer and have different tasks, but I get most of my work through one client. I would hate to be chasing down new clients all the time.
- anyfoo 8y ago
  Is that true, do most people like doing the same thing every day? It certainly is not true for me. EDIT: A few repliers clarified that it's probably about the stable and reliable income, and not about the nature of the work that's done every day. I can agree with that!
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - volkk 8y ago
    i think OP meant more along the lines of: people like stability and ones with families can't rely on an inconsistent income that the freelance world generally provides. not actually doing the exact same thing everyday
  - amorphid 8y ago
    I'd guess everyone is different. A pastry chef might see every tasty creation as a new opportunity to bring joy & happiness into the world. For me, cooking is a chore, and every pastry I have to make after the first is no longer something new.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I guess it would be better to say that most people like having a stable and reliable income.
  - sotojuan 8y ago
    A lot of people would love the stability and predictability of a regular 9-5 office job. I think that's what they meant.
  - __s 8y ago
BartBoch 8y ago
I think the Gig Economy is supplementing regular economy, provides a good chance for certain people to break off the 9-5 and gives more of a positive social impact than a negative one.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  While anecdotal and definitely not a high percentage, but I have met quite a few Uber drivers that just like to stay active and meet people. They tend to be the most interesting to chat with. They don't seem to be doing it for the money, more so just to be out and about. Im sure the supplemental income is helpful but it didn't seem like that was the primary reason. Edit: Aditionally usually those have been the best drivers
lalos 8y ago
It did reshape it. Turns out you can offload your costs to your 'employees' that hardly will organize and project costs and earnings to the future (like a competent business). I've talked with bunch of car sharing drivers who were bamboozled with car loans, get hit by traffic infractions, costs of maintenance and the list goes on and on. I feel that the gig economy preys on people who have not developed that risk management and are lured by the promise of easy money (make $500 this weekend). That can be verified by reading on what kind of game theory the big companies investing in (how to sweeten a deal, making people decide on the spot yes or no, etc). It's an interesting state, but I hope they turn it around. There is potential.
- taurath 8y ago
  That’s what we have done for teachers for decades.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Interesting that this thread and the "chatbots aren't so great after all" thread hit the front page on the same day. Anyone who actually thought people gave a shit about chatbots was either deluded, a chatbot API salesman, or a manager/owner trying to cut costs by downsizing their call/chat support center. Anyone who actually thought the gig economy was helping anyone but business owners was either deluded or a shill.
  - cfadvan 8y ago
    The problem is that “deluded” and “personally invested in” form a venom diagram that looks a lot like a big circle, especially on business and tech sites.
    - nkantar 8y ago
      > "venom diagram" Fantastic typo! (Or was it intentional?)
      - cfadvan 8y ago
ourmandave 8y ago
NPR covered this yesterday. https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617863204/one-in-10-workers-are-independent-contractors-labor-department-says https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617863204/one-in-10-workers-a... One note from that story was they missed 25M low-income workers. Jennifer Curry, a senior director at Samaschool, a San Francisco training program for low-income contract workers, estimates the government left out 25 million to 30 million freelance or contract workers who do some part-time work.
- gthtjtkt 8y ago
  > estimates the government left out 25 million to 30 million freelance or contract workers who do some part-time work. Aren't those exactly the type of workers that the NY Times article is talking about? 25 million is about 16% of the total workforce. So in reality the number of gig workers might have doubled to something around 20% (or higher)?
WheelsAtLarge 8y ago
The reduction in jobs in the gig economy has to be a direct result of the overall recovery of the economy. We are at a point where there are more jobs than workers to fill the jobs. Why would anyone take a crap gig job if they can get a steady paycheck? There are people that like the flexibility but the pay sux and no benefits for most of those jobs. The gig economy job is the new temp job. Just like temp jobs, they will start to increase as the economy cools. But for now, there's little incentive to get one over one with a steady paycheck.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Why would anyone take a crap gig job if they can get a steady paycheck? There are people that like the flexibility I think you're underestimating how important that flexibility is to a large contingent of people. I have talked a lot of Uber/Lyft drivers and have heard a ton of stories about how valuable that flexibility is. It's huge for students who are in school, for people who already work another job but want supplemental income, people who are mostly retired (or never worked) but have some new expense come up (one lady I spoke to recently started driving for Uber just to help pay for her daughter's upcoming wedding), people who are pursuing careers in music or other artistic endeavors, entrepreneurs who need a way to pay the rent while getting their business bootstrapped, etc. For a lot of people in those situations, the control over their time really is a crucial aspect of what makes Uber/Lyft desirable. Granted, that's just one aspect of the gig economy, but it seems to be a big one.
- eggpy 8y ago
  > the pay sux Strongly disagree. Waiting tables or bartending at high-end restaurants could be considered gig work. Wedding photography is gig work. I have a friend who runs a stationary side business as a "gig". These jobs, if you are able to market yourself effectively and gain a good reputation and some solid contacts, can pay extremely well. I have a nice 9-5 with benefits and stability, but my friends in the above positions earn about the same I do and work close to half of my hours. That obviously isn't the case for everyone who does these, but I don't think you can make the claim "the pay sux" for all gig work.
lhorie 8y ago
That's not really surprising at all. The article says the category of workers in "gig" type of jobs went from 11% in 2005 to 10% in 2017. To change this number above some level of statistical significance, people would have to move away from salaried work to gig jobs en masse or vice-versa, but that's not really how skillsets and careers work. You don't wake up one day and say: "geez, I'm going to stop being a lawyer and go drive for Uber to spend more time with my kids". It is much more likely that a person flipping burgers somewhere might try being an Uber driver and that an Uber driver somewhere else might get fed up and end up going back to one of the low-skill alternatives (flipping burgers, retail, etc) at roughly equal rates.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  Or people generally don't choose gig work as a first choice, and tightening unemployment has allowed them to get closer to their preferences.
uri93nd83 8y ago
IMO it’s a perfect opportunity to get programs we should already have, like universal healthcare, off the ground The bemoaning by corporate media is hardly surprising. They want people to stay in one place. It fits the meme they know But to quite the late Anthony Bourdain, “Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.” Do we really need to babysit this much permanent infra that are massive office buildings and shopping malls? Surely we need spaces to work and trade physical goods, especially if we’re on the g I think this is the next step of globalization Look at the Cold War era. Of course it made sense to hunker down. Where were you going to go? Europe and Japan were bombed to hell. The USSR? This is the last 60 years coming to an end Time for new patterns around what work and life should look like
mrtksn 8y ago
When I first arrived in London my English was not good enough to speak on the phone, I had no idea what the London job market for developers looked like, I had no idea where should I live and where should I settle. So for the first 3-4 months, I did some wine waiting as a gig(agency work, no fixed place or hours. Like with Uber, you provide your own gear - like uniforms, bottle openers etc.) at the finest, the most iconic places in London. I worked at the Shard, I worked at the Cafe Royal, I worked at Four Seasons in events where celebrities like Victoria Beckham or Prince Harry were guests. I did my jubilee at BAFTA's after party, I was the wine waiter for the award-winning team that made the Amy Winehouse documentary. That night I had a chance to meet with pretty much every single celebrity(900+ guests from the industry), I was a huge Breaking Bad fan and I had the chance to speak with Walter White. How to get into this gig business without ever working in this industry? 1 day of training and boom, I'm a waiter at the fines restaurants in the world. It was such an amazing experience but whoever imagines living like that forever should have poor judgement. I was there to make some money until I get a real job and open a bank account(really hard to do because of catch 22) and most people who worked with me were either new arrivals like me or Australians who came to the UK to experience Europe for a year or 2(They come just before or after college with 2 year work visa, work for few months and travel Europe). The world is transforming, the employment contracts are not the driving force. They are a reaction to the new needs. I think it's alright, an equilibrium will be reached.
- zabzonk 8y ago
  You worked as a sommelier (that's the term, not "wine waiter") at high-cost restaurants without being able to speak rudimentary English? Bollocks.
  - gowld 8y ago
    Perhaps someone who has actually lived in England knows more about the restaurant business and language there than you do? HN has global community; please check your linguistic provincialism at the comment box. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wine%20waiter https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wine%20waiter https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wine_waiter https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wine_waiter https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jul/25/whatarewinewaitersfor https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jul/25/whatar... Related: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rudimentary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rudimentary
gorpomon 8y ago
It's easy to get cynical about the gig economy. But I try and remember that the original spirit of it has been largely successful. The promise of the app economy was that you could take an idea like "I wish I could drive people around for extra money" and make it real, and now it's only real, but for people like my driving-averse mom it's revolutionary. But distortions to the dream have come from all sides. Customers demand the low cost, high quality service that independent contracts inherently don't provide. Customers also fail to recognize that your driver is an independent contractor, but they treat them like any service industry employee. Rideshare companies actively decide to offload employment costs to drivers while treating them just like employees. Drivers too violate the spirit of this idea, many immediately turn it into a full-time gig without organizing larger efforts to improve it. The spirit is that these gigs augment income, not become a sole source of it. But almost across the board, these are messaging problems, and we as a society are really good at fixing messaging, despite how it feels at time. We are living in a time of massive message correction, and millions of previously marginalized people benefit. Is the gig economy ideal? No. Eminently fixable? Yes.
- unleashit 8y ago
  "The spirit is that these gigs augment income, not become a sole source of it." Says who? If the jobs are moving to the gig economy, then what income is a person supposed to augment? I find this argument both false and harmful to understanding the situation at hand. I agree that there are certain workers who benefit from the gig economy (those living in mom's basement, have a working partner, etc.). What I disagree about (and thus possess cynicism) is that the "majority" will benefit from the transition of many positions from traditional employment to contracting.
- ProblemFactory 8y ago
  I think one of the main issues is that the current employment classification is too binary. There are independent contractors, who are really independent small businesses: set their own rates, do their own advertising, choose their own customers, and keep all of the profit. And employees, who work for their employer for set hours, and get a stable salary and benefits in return. We need a new third category: dependent contractor. Once that exists, we can start a more meaningful debate on what freedoms vs stability guarantees are best for it, without trying to force people into one extreme or the other.
coldtea 8y ago
Maybe wave after wave of market fads (like the "gig economy", "chatbots", "voice everything") are just that, fads created to make some execs fatter. I'd include all the hot air tech like AI, Big Data, and self-driving cars in that (until proven otherwise)...
rossdavidh 8y ago
It seems to me that this article (and many others, and the underlying statistics they report on) are lumping together a lot of different things under the same label, that aren't all that similar. I am a contract programmer, but my typical contract is 6-9 months in duration, and I get paid well. Is that part of the "gig economy"? It's not much like driving for Uber, I think, but it is neither part-time nor permanent employment, so it would often get lumped in there. Some truck-drivers work on a per-gig basis, but even though they are driving things for money it doesn't work all that much like Uber, in terms of pay or how you get treated or what your leverage in the market. I think the term "gig economy" is too broad to say anything meaningful about.
everyone 8y ago
For most people (not highly sought after programmers), its an erosion of what paltry remnant of their workers rights remains. Last time wealth inequality peaked, the robber barons had strike breakers and whatnot. This time (with wealth inequality continuing to soar to historically unprecedented heights) they have the 'gig economy'.
- perfmode 8y ago
  but it's a free market! workers are free to not participate in the gig economy. /s
  - danielndukwu 8y ago
    MMM.... free to starve as well..
  - collyw 8y ago
    My friend used to use this argument when I complained that Uber / Deliveroo were a bag of crap. I didn´t have a great counterargument, I just mumbled something about workers rights. What is a convincing argument that this line of thinking is wrong?
    - abfan1127 8y ago
      there isn't one, unless you think you shouldn't be free to make decisions like participating in the gig economy.
      - quadrangle 8y ago
        the full claim being countered wasn't "workers should be free to participate in the gig economy", it included "it's a free market" which is the part more easily countered. Uber's market is a market, but it's certainly not a free market.
      - repsilat 8y ago
        That's not terribly helpful. Plenty of people take that freedom as an axiomatic, inviolable good or right, but reasonable people can have different values. Some people believe that those freedoms are necessarily a net win for the economy, but that's a pretty shallow argument too. Maybe workers' rights are a race to the bottom, a tragedy of the commons -- perhaps some small amount of regulation would be good for business and for workers, by forcing companies to spend a small amount more to get a more sustainable workforce without giving up advantages to competitors. Obviously these freedoms and protections exist on a continuum. We've mostly come down on the side of minimum wages, which is a compromise on those fundamental, absolute freedoms -- in a sense all "workers rights" are curtailments of "jobseekers rights".
madrox 8y ago
I have no data for this, but I suspect an ethnographic study of gig workers would find their behaviors mirror that of entrepreneurs. If true, you can probably draw a lot of conclusions about gig work from all the other studies done. In short, I suspect gig work is much more mentally taxing than typical work, since it isn't reliable or rooted in routine. I think that's why gig work is estimated at roughly the same percentage of the population as entrepreneurs.
m3kw9 8y ago
If you look at Uber, it’s just one great app system away from taking over another form of work which was taxi
DoreenMichele 8y ago
If you read it closely, the article basically says "We don't really know what is going on, in part because our survey isn't really designed to capture data on the gig economy." I have done gig work for over six years. At the moment, I am working more like a traditional entrepreneur, but I can do that in part because I have the security of gig work to fall back on if I can't drum up enough clients. If I could get the kind of job I want, I would take it. That last statement is a relatively recent development. I have health issues and doing gig work made it possible for me to have some earned income under really challenging circumstances where that really should not have been possible. Being able to access earned income while I'll and homeless allowed me to work on improving my health, allowed me to make working in my health a priority in a way that regular employment would not have facilitated. I think this is the real revolution that isn't being talked about. Having a serious career requires you to have your act together in many important ways. You need energy, mental focus, some idea of what you like doing and are good at, etc. Gig work gives people options for muddling through or supplementing your income during difficult transitions. Some years ago, I read a comment that was an A-ha! moment for me. Instead of attributing recessions to mysterious forces somewhere out there in the ether, it attributed them to human nature. It suggested we get lazy and complacent during good times, then work hard to get back on track after things start coming apart at the seams. I am sure there are also large scale forces impacting people, but I dropped out of college in part because I knew people with college degrees and student loans who were mooching off of relatives and delivering newspapers. I felt I could deliver newspapers without a degree and would be better off for not being saddled with debt. It was very clear to me at the age of 20 that the "promise" I was hearing that a degree was a guaranteed ticket to a serious career and the good life was a myth. There is more to career success than getting X credential. Large scale trends are not just the result of public policy at the federal level or real world phenomenon like Peak Oil. They are also the cumulative result of many individuals making choices. The gig economy provides some fluidity and flexibility for workers who are handicapped, have a health issue, are having trouble breaking into their chosen career etc. Yes, I am aware that if gig work is all that is available, this can be a serious problem. But, in the other hand, another observation someone made that was an epiphany for me is that layoffs are part of the price we pay for having stable corporate jobs for some. When there isn't enough work to go around, someone gets shafted because of it. There is no magic way to make that not happen. I'm aware there are people being shafted here. I think in the US, they are being shafted much more by our lack of universal health coverage than by gigs lacking benefits per se. Sort of rambly. I don't have a specific point per se. More like thinking out loud, I guess.
ferongr 8y ago
The state has decided to regulate or even ban the "gig economy". The media is just paving the way shaping the narrative.

225 points by oli5679 8y ago

Reminds me of the economist Robert Solow's quip: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."

lkrubner 8y ago
This is a good comment. It is interesting to consider how much rhetoric there is about robots and AI and Machine Learning and how these technologies can revolutionize work and lead to big productivity gains. And yet, in reality, the economy shows no sign of this. Productivity growth was very strong in the mid-20th century, but since 1973 productivity growth has been stagnant.
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  Because all the competitors are doing it, too.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    This is nonsense. The inflation-adjusted cost of producing one can of beer would be a pretty standard measure of productivity (in the beer industry). It can rise and fall completely independently of whether beer companies all use the same strategies or all use unique strategies.
- kjeetgill 8y ago
  I don't know much about the subject. How do we measure productivity? What units do we use? I ask because it _feels_ like everything has changed since 1973 at least. So I'm curious where my intuition differs from reality.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > How do we measure productivity? Productivity as typically reported is a statistic called "Total Factor Productivity" (TFP). Here's how it's calculated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_factor_productivity#Calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_factor_productivity#Calc... > What units do we use? TFP is unitless.
- taurath 8y ago
  Call centers, accounting, and help desk and other things that used to take a small army are now a subscription service for far less money. The “efficiency” rating is probably wrong if it doesn’t think that’s increased efficiency.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  Productivity has been stagnant, or productivity growth has been stagnant? Constant productivity growth is a terrible argument that computers haven't contributed to productivity. No single innovation, however broadly defined, will produce constant growth. As one source of growth peters out, another one picks up.
- state_less 8y ago
  AI and Machine Learning are newer, and probably have plenty of productivity gains to point to, but the thing that comes to mind for me is the amount of CAD and computer analysis that goes into our products these days. You can make a car that lasts twice as long and is more aerodynamic. Musk's rockets use computers for design and algorithms to land. The down stream effect is new satellites with more bandwidth (e.g. Iridium). In the end, a designer can make a product people get more use out of.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  > Productivity growth was very strong in the mid-20th century, but since 1973 productivity growth has been stagnant. That's not true; the first decade of the 2000s rivaled the post-war era in terms of TFP growth: https://www.bls.gov/lpc/nfbbar.gif https://www.bls.gov/lpc/nfbbar.gif Even Brynjolfsson's ultimate thesis was not that "computers don't induce growth in TFP", but rather that "computers and business practices need to converge in order for computers to have an effect on TFP".
- jpao79 8y ago
  Reminds me of this article: Google and Facebook contribute zero economic value. That's a big problem for trade. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/10/24/google-and-facebook-contribute-zero-economic-value-thats-a-big-problem-for-trade/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/10/2...
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    Really, 0 economic value. Nobody gets anything of value from using those services, its just wasted time.
    - flomble 8y ago
      The linked article is about how despite those services obviously having value to their users, they aren't accounted for in economic statistics, e.g. in measuring productivity, because they are "free" (i.e. paid for by subjecting oneself to advertising/tracking).
      - conanbatt 8y ago
        I am suspect of this being true because GDP is measured in several ways, and you can measure the contribution of tech companies through their salaries and profits or through their expenditures and sales to ads. (i.e. their contribution to GDPcan be measured in their revenue) But this is also a red-herring, its at most an accounting issue, not a real economy issue.
- hoschicz 8y ago
  Changes in GDP are caused either by debt or by productivity increases. Productivity growth since 1973 has _not_ been stagnant.
  - lkrubner 8y ago
    Labor productivity since 1973 has been much lower than in the decades before 1973: https://qz.com/633080/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-productivity-growth/ https://qz.com/633080/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-producti...
justin 8y ago
Maybe productivity metrics aren't a perfect measure of society. On many qualitative dimensions we have a much higher quality of living now because of computers: You can talk to anyone almost anywhere in the world for free, instantly. You can recall any information or media instantly. The list goes on..
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  Continuing the beer theme of my sidethread comment, I read a piece years ago making the point that the then-current explosion of microbreweries looked like a productivity disaster -- microbreweries produce a gallon of beer for a much higher cost than Anheuser-Busch does, so when an economist working with national-level data divides "beer produced in 2011" by "dollars spent producing beer in 2011", it looks like beer productivity has cratered compared to the golden age of the 1950s. In reality, of course, a can of Budweiser is cheaper than ever (productivity is up) while the populace has become so rich that it's voluntarily spending extra money on what it perceives as higher-quality beer. But there is no conceptual place for this in "beer" productivity statistics.
  - menacingly 8y ago
    This is great, it's one of those ideas I'll come back to later and think about again, applying to different stuff. Economics is such a tragedy, because on the one hand it's so elegant and satisfying, but on the other it seems sufficiently incomplete to be considered broken. Maybe it's the newtonian version of something.
    - xapata 8y ago
      You mean current methods will be replaced by more nuanced and accurate methods. Not that economics will be replaced. That'd be like physics being replaced instead of the methods changing. Newtonian methods had known flaws before relativity replaced them and quantum mechanics expanded that. Current economic methods also have known flaws. We're just waiting for Einstein.
vkou 8y ago
And yet, secretaries have been replaced by e-mail and calendars, human computers have been replaced by Excel, and armies of bean-counters have been replaced by business CMS systems that cost one fifth as much to maintain. People who used to do those jobs are now making lattes and avocado toast.
uri93nd83 8y ago
What magical new inventions is he thinking we should produce? There’s plenty of demand for healthcare services and infra, but no social will to force the political will to fund it Everyone has an opinion about how the rest of the world isn’t doing what they think it should, given some high level abstract view Few offer concrete ideas
gaius 8y ago
This is nonsense because anyone can see that the technology facilitated outsourcing and offshoring and logistics. The productivity that should have been in the old industrial heartlands happened - it just happened in China instead.

danschumann 8y ago

People(most people) like to do the same thing every day. Even me, I'm a programmer and have different tasks, but I get most of my work through one client. I would hate to be chasing down new clients all the time.

anyfoo 8y ago
Is that true, do most people like doing the same thing every day? It certainly is not true for me. EDIT: A few repliers clarified that it's probably about the stable and reliable income, and not about the nature of the work that's done every day. I can agree with that!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- volkk 8y ago
  i think OP meant more along the lines of: people like stability and ones with families can't rely on an inconsistent income that the freelance world generally provides. not actually doing the exact same thing everyday
- amorphid 8y ago
  I'd guess everyone is different. A pastry chef might see every tasty creation as a new opportunity to bring joy & happiness into the world. For me, cooking is a chore, and every pastry I have to make after the first is no longer something new.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I guess it would be better to say that most people like having a stable and reliable income.
- sotojuan 8y ago
  A lot of people would love the stability and predictability of a regular 9-5 office job. I think that's what they meant.
- __s 8y ago

BartBoch 8y ago

I think the Gig Economy is supplementing regular economy, provides a good chance for certain people to break off the 9-5 and gives more of a positive social impact than a negative one.

paulie_a 8y ago
While anecdotal and definitely not a high percentage, but I have met quite a few Uber drivers that just like to stay active and meet people. They tend to be the most interesting to chat with. They don't seem to be doing it for the money, more so just to be out and about. Im sure the supplemental income is helpful but it didn't seem like that was the primary reason. Edit: Aditionally usually those have been the best drivers

lalos 8y ago

It did reshape it. Turns out you can offload your costs to your 'employees' that hardly will organize and project costs and earnings to the future (like a competent business). I've talked with bunch of car sharing drivers who were bamboozled with car loans, get hit by traffic infractions, costs of maintenance and the list goes on and on. I feel that the gig economy preys on people who have not developed that risk management and are lured by the promise of easy money (make $500 this weekend). That can be verified by reading on what kind of game theory the big companies investing in (how to sweeten a deal, making people decide on the spot yes or no, etc). It's an interesting state, but I hope they turn it around. There is potential.

taurath 8y ago
That’s what we have done for teachers for decades.
nerdponx 8y ago
Interesting that this thread and the "chatbots aren't so great after all" thread hit the front page on the same day. Anyone who actually thought people gave a shit about chatbots was either deluded, a chatbot API salesman, or a manager/owner trying to cut costs by downsizing their call/chat support center. Anyone who actually thought the gig economy was helping anyone but business owners was either deluded or a shill.
- cfadvan 8y ago
  The problem is that “deluded” and “personally invested in” form a venom diagram that looks a lot like a big circle, especially on business and tech sites.
  - nkantar 8y ago
    > "venom diagram" Fantastic typo! (Or was it intentional?)
    - cfadvan 8y ago

ourmandave 8y ago

NPR covered this yesterday. https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617863204/one-in-10-workers-are-independent-contractors-labor-department-says https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617863204/one-in-10-workers-a... One note from that story was they missed 25M low-income workers. Jennifer Curry, a senior director at Samaschool, a San Francisco training program for low-income contract workers, estimates the government left out 25 million to 30 million freelance or contract workers who do some part-time work.

gthtjtkt 8y ago
> estimates the government left out 25 million to 30 million freelance or contract workers who do some part-time work. Aren't those exactly the type of workers that the NY Times article is talking about? 25 million is about 16% of the total workforce. So in reality the number of gig workers might have doubled to something around 20% (or higher)?

WheelsAtLarge 8y ago

The reduction in jobs in the gig economy has to be a direct result of the overall recovery of the economy. We are at a point where there are more jobs than workers to fill the jobs. Why would anyone take a crap gig job if they can get a steady paycheck? There are people that like the flexibility but the pay sux and no benefits for most of those jobs. The gig economy job is the new temp job. Just like temp jobs, they will start to increase as the economy cools. But for now, there's little incentive to get one over one with a steady paycheck.

mindcrime 8y ago
Why would anyone take a crap gig job if they can get a steady paycheck? There are people that like the flexibility I think you're underestimating how important that flexibility is to a large contingent of people. I have talked a lot of Uber/Lyft drivers and have heard a ton of stories about how valuable that flexibility is. It's huge for students who are in school, for people who already work another job but want supplemental income, people who are mostly retired (or never worked) but have some new expense come up (one lady I spoke to recently started driving for Uber just to help pay for her daughter's upcoming wedding), people who are pursuing careers in music or other artistic endeavors, entrepreneurs who need a way to pay the rent while getting their business bootstrapped, etc. For a lot of people in those situations, the control over their time really is a crucial aspect of what makes Uber/Lyft desirable. Granted, that's just one aspect of the gig economy, but it seems to be a big one.
eggpy 8y ago
> the pay sux Strongly disagree. Waiting tables or bartending at high-end restaurants could be considered gig work. Wedding photography is gig work. I have a friend who runs a stationary side business as a "gig". These jobs, if you are able to market yourself effectively and gain a good reputation and some solid contacts, can pay extremely well. I have a nice 9-5 with benefits and stability, but my friends in the above positions earn about the same I do and work close to half of my hours. That obviously isn't the case for everyone who does these, but I don't think you can make the claim "the pay sux" for all gig work.

lhorie 8y ago

That's not really surprising at all. The article says the category of workers in "gig" type of jobs went from 11% in 2005 to 10% in 2017. To change this number above some level of statistical significance, people would have to move away from salaried work to gig jobs en masse or vice-versa, but that's not really how skillsets and careers work. You don't wake up one day and say: "geez, I'm going to stop being a lawyer and go drive for Uber to spend more time with my kids". It is much more likely that a person flipping burgers somewhere might try being an Uber driver and that an Uber driver somewhere else might get fed up and end up going back to one of the low-skill alternatives (flipping burgers, retail, etc) at roughly equal rates.

dv_dt 8y ago
Or people generally don't choose gig work as a first choice, and tightening unemployment has allowed them to get closer to their preferences.

uri93nd83 8y ago

IMO it’s a perfect opportunity to get programs we should already have, like universal healthcare, off the ground The bemoaning by corporate media is hardly surprising. They want people to stay in one place. It fits the meme they know But to quite the late Anthony Bourdain, “Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.” Do we really need to babysit this much permanent infra that are massive office buildings and shopping malls? Surely we need spaces to work and trade physical goods, especially if we’re on the g I think this is the next step of globalization Look at the Cold War era. Of course it made sense to hunker down. Where were you going to go? Europe and Japan were bombed to hell. The USSR? This is the last 60 years coming to an end Time for new patterns around what work and life should look like

mrtksn 8y ago

When I first arrived in London my English was not good enough to speak on the phone, I had no idea what the London job market for developers looked like, I had no idea where should I live and where should I settle. So for the first 3-4 months, I did some wine waiting as a gig(agency work, no fixed place or hours. Like with Uber, you provide your own gear - like uniforms, bottle openers etc.) at the finest, the most iconic places in London. I worked at the Shard, I worked at the Cafe Royal, I worked at Four Seasons in events where celebrities like Victoria Beckham or Prince Harry were guests. I did my jubilee at BAFTA's after party, I was the wine waiter for the award-winning team that made the Amy Winehouse documentary. That night I had a chance to meet with pretty much every single celebrity(900+ guests from the industry), I was a huge Breaking Bad fan and I had the chance to speak with Walter White. How to get into this gig business without ever working in this industry? 1 day of training and boom, I'm a waiter at the fines restaurants in the world. It was such an amazing experience but whoever imagines living like that forever should have poor judgement. I was there to make some money until I get a real job and open a bank account(really hard to do because of catch 22) and most people who worked with me were either new arrivals like me or Australians who came to the UK to experience Europe for a year or 2(They come just before or after college with 2 year work visa, work for few months and travel Europe). The world is transforming, the employment contracts are not the driving force. They are a reaction to the new needs. I think it's alright, an equilibrium will be reached.

zabzonk 8y ago
You worked as a sommelier (that's the term, not "wine waiter") at high-cost restaurants without being able to speak rudimentary English? Bollocks.
- gowld 8y ago
  Perhaps someone who has actually lived in England knows more about the restaurant business and language there than you do? HN has global community; please check your linguistic provincialism at the comment box. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wine%20waiter https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wine%20waiter https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wine_waiter https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wine_waiter https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jul/25/whatarewinewaitersfor https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jul/25/whatar... Related: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rudimentary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rudimentary

gorpomon 8y ago

It's easy to get cynical about the gig economy. But I try and remember that the original spirit of it has been largely successful. The promise of the app economy was that you could take an idea like "I wish I could drive people around for extra money" and make it real, and now it's only real, but for people like my driving-averse mom it's revolutionary. But distortions to the dream have come from all sides. Customers demand the low cost, high quality service that independent contracts inherently don't provide. Customers also fail to recognize that your driver is an independent contractor, but they treat them like any service industry employee. Rideshare companies actively decide to offload employment costs to drivers while treating them just like employees. Drivers too violate the spirit of this idea, many immediately turn it into a full-time gig without organizing larger efforts to improve it. The spirit is that these gigs augment income, not become a sole source of it. But almost across the board, these are messaging problems, and we as a society are really good at fixing messaging, despite how it feels at time. We are living in a time of massive message correction, and millions of previously marginalized people benefit. Is the gig economy ideal? No. Eminently fixable? Yes.

unleashit 8y ago
"The spirit is that these gigs augment income, not become a sole source of it." Says who? If the jobs are moving to the gig economy, then what income is a person supposed to augment? I find this argument both false and harmful to understanding the situation at hand. I agree that there are certain workers who benefit from the gig economy (those living in mom's basement, have a working partner, etc.). What I disagree about (and thus possess cynicism) is that the "majority" will benefit from the transition of many positions from traditional employment to contracting.
ProblemFactory 8y ago
I think one of the main issues is that the current employment classification is too binary. There are independent contractors, who are really independent small businesses: set their own rates, do their own advertising, choose their own customers, and keep all of the profit. And employees, who work for their employer for set hours, and get a stable salary and benefits in return. We need a new third category: dependent contractor. Once that exists, we can start a more meaningful debate on what freedoms vs stability guarantees are best for it, without trying to force people into one extreme or the other.

coldtea 8y ago

Maybe wave after wave of market fads (like the "gig economy", "chatbots", "voice everything") are just that, fads created to make some execs fatter. I'd include all the hot air tech like AI, Big Data, and self-driving cars in that (until proven otherwise)...

rossdavidh 8y ago

It seems to me that this article (and many others, and the underlying statistics they report on) are lumping together a lot of different things under the same label, that aren't all that similar. I am a contract programmer, but my typical contract is 6-9 months in duration, and I get paid well. Is that part of the "gig economy"? It's not much like driving for Uber, I think, but it is neither part-time nor permanent employment, so it would often get lumped in there. Some truck-drivers work on a per-gig basis, but even though they are driving things for money it doesn't work all that much like Uber, in terms of pay or how you get treated or what your leverage in the market. I think the term "gig economy" is too broad to say anything meaningful about.

everyone 8y ago

For most people (not highly sought after programmers), its an erosion of what paltry remnant of their workers rights remains. Last time wealth inequality peaked, the robber barons had strike breakers and whatnot. This time (with wealth inequality continuing to soar to historically unprecedented heights) they have the 'gig economy'.

perfmode 8y ago
but it's a free market! workers are free to not participate in the gig economy. /s
- danielndukwu 8y ago
  MMM.... free to starve as well..
- collyw 8y ago
  My friend used to use this argument when I complained that Uber / Deliveroo were a bag of crap. I didn´t have a great counterargument, I just mumbled something about workers rights. What is a convincing argument that this line of thinking is wrong?
  - abfan1127 8y ago
    there isn't one, unless you think you shouldn't be free to make decisions like participating in the gig economy.
    - quadrangle 8y ago
      the full claim being countered wasn't "workers should be free to participate in the gig economy", it included "it's a free market" which is the part more easily countered. Uber's market is a market, but it's certainly not a free market.
    - repsilat 8y ago
      That's not terribly helpful. Plenty of people take that freedom as an axiomatic, inviolable good or right, but reasonable people can have different values. Some people believe that those freedoms are necessarily a net win for the economy, but that's a pretty shallow argument too. Maybe workers' rights are a race to the bottom, a tragedy of the commons -- perhaps some small amount of regulation would be good for business and for workers, by forcing companies to spend a small amount more to get a more sustainable workforce without giving up advantages to competitors. Obviously these freedoms and protections exist on a continuum. We've mostly come down on the side of minimum wages, which is a compromise on those fundamental, absolute freedoms -- in a sense all "workers rights" are curtailments of "jobseekers rights".

madrox 8y ago

I have no data for this, but I suspect an ethnographic study of gig workers would find their behaviors mirror that of entrepreneurs. If true, you can probably draw a lot of conclusions about gig work from all the other studies done. In short, I suspect gig work is much more mentally taxing than typical work, since it isn't reliable or rooted in routine. I think that's why gig work is estimated at roughly the same percentage of the population as entrepreneurs.

m3kw9 8y ago

If you look at Uber, it’s just one great app system away from taking over another form of work which was taxi

DoreenMichele 8y ago

If you read it closely, the article basically says "We don't really know what is going on, in part because our survey isn't really designed to capture data on the gig economy." I have done gig work for over six years. At the moment, I am working more like a traditional entrepreneur, but I can do that in part because I have the security of gig work to fall back on if I can't drum up enough clients. If I could get the kind of job I want, I would take it. That last statement is a relatively recent development. I have health issues and doing gig work made it possible for me to have some earned income under really challenging circumstances where that really should not have been possible. Being able to access earned income while I'll and homeless allowed me to work on improving my health, allowed me to make working in my health a priority in a way that regular employment would not have facilitated. I think this is the real revolution that isn't being talked about. Having a serious career requires you to have your act together in many important ways. You need energy, mental focus, some idea of what you like doing and are good at, etc. Gig work gives people options for muddling through or supplementing your income during difficult transitions. Some years ago, I read a comment that was an A-ha! moment for me. Instead of attributing recessions to mysterious forces somewhere out there in the ether, it attributed them to human nature. It suggested we get lazy and complacent during good times, then work hard to get back on track after things start coming apart at the seams. I am sure there are also large scale forces impacting people, but I dropped out of college in part because I knew people with college degrees and student loans who were mooching off of relatives and delivering newspapers. I felt I could deliver newspapers without a degree and would be better off for not being saddled with debt. It was very clear to me at the age of 20 that the "promise" I was hearing that a degree was a guaranteed ticket to a serious career and the good life was a myth. There is more to career success than getting X credential. Large scale trends are not just the result of public policy at the federal level or real world phenomenon like Peak Oil. They are also the cumulative result of many individuals making choices. The gig economy provides some fluidity and flexibility for workers who are handicapped, have a health issue, are having trouble breaking into their chosen career etc. Yes, I am aware that if gig work is all that is available, this can be a serious problem. But, in the other hand, another observation someone made that was an epiphany for me is that layoffs are part of the price we pay for having stable corporate jobs for some. When there isn't enough work to go around, someone gets shafted because of it. There is no magic way to make that not happen. I'm aware there are people being shafted here. I think in the US, they are being shafted much more by our lack of universal health coverage than by gigs lacking benefits per se. Sort of rambly. I don't have a specific point per se. More like thinking out loud, I guess.

ferongr 8y ago

The state has decided to regulate or even ban the "gig economy". The media is just paving the way shaping the narrative.