There's a bunch of differentiation here that really needs different names for the roles. Personally and in observation I've seen it lead to way too much confusi

There's a bunch of differentiation here that really needs different names for the roles. Personally and in observation I've seen it lead to way too much confusion and arguing at cross-purposes. We've got people who own, or are, established independent businesses whose customers are other businesses. In white collar work these roles are generally called "consultants". In blue collar work they are often "contractors" or "sub-contractors". We've got temp agencies who provide temporary or permatemp employees to other companies, where the temporary employee may or may not have any guarantee of long-term employment by the temp agency, but are almost guaranteed to have stretches of time in which they aren't compensated, even if they do. These roles are "temps" or "permatemps", but often get called "contractors", though the real "contractor" is the temp agency. The jobs described in the article fall in this bin. We've got people who directly fill roles for spec pay. I guess these days these roles are called "gig work". I think the word "contractor" should be reserved for talking about non-employee labor, or business-to-business labor, in general. Even then there are edge cases (like catering) that I'm not sure belong here, or belong in the non-contract business-to-customer category. The more specific terms should be used for the particular type of job (Consultant/Sub-contractor, temp/permatemp, gig worker).