4 ms·

I'm trying to figure out why the author thinks the gig economy was supposed to create good jobs. It was supposed to create ways for people with free time to ea

I'm trying to figure out why the author thinks the gig economy was supposed to create good jobs. It was supposed to create ways for people with free time to earn a side income at around minimum wage, but with more flexibility. The phenomenon of gig jobs getting turned into full time occupations points to how bad the rest of the labor market is for many people.

daveslash 7y ago
I'm not sure that it was ever explicitly stated that it was supposed to create jobs, and I never expected or claimed that it would. That said, what I'd like to add is this: a few years after the recession people who were still feeling the employment effects were certainly looking towards the growing gig economy with high hopes that it would create jobs for them. I don't have hard supporting evidence; that position anecdotal and based off conversations with people at that time. I also think that (depending on what sources you read) many journalists capitalized on this to talk up the hype.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Thanks for the response. 100% agree that when gig jobs started picking up, a lot of people were very hopeful about it, especially journalists. But I think a lot of the hope was only on the naive underemployed person side, not on the gig employer side, where the business models can only work with extremely cheap labor (if they work at all).
sokoloff 7y ago
Or perhaps it points in part to how many people value maximizing freedom over maximizing dollars of income. I talk to most every Lyft and Uber driver; I'd say most of them have a good idea of how much they're making (taking expenses into account) and probably 25% or more specifically enjoy the freedom over the money angle. (On the other side, that's about the same proportion who wish they could find a "good" full time job but are driving in the meantime to make ends meet.)

daveslash 7y ago

I'm not sure that it was ever explicitly stated that it was supposed to create jobs, and I never expected or claimed that it would. That said, what I'd like to add is this: a few years after the recession people who were still feeling the employment effects were certainly looking towards the growing gig economy with high hopes that it would create jobs for them. I don't have hard supporting evidence; that position anecdotal and based off conversations with people at that time. I also think that (depending on what sources you read) many journalists capitalized on this to talk up the hype.

mdorazio 7y ago
Thanks for the response. 100% agree that when gig jobs started picking up, a lot of people were very hopeful about it, especially journalists. But I think a lot of the hope was only on the naive underemployed person side, not on the gig employer side, where the business models can only work with extremely cheap labor (if they work at all).

sokoloff 7y ago

Or perhaps it points in part to how many people value maximizing freedom over maximizing dollars of income. I talk to most every Lyft and Uber driver; I'd say most of them have a good idea of how much they're making (taking expenses into account) and probably 25% or more specifically enjoy the freedom over the money angle. (On the other side, that's about the same proportion who wish they could find a "good" full time job but are driving in the meantime to make ends meet.)