I focused my research this week on the changing nature of jobs, particularly in relation to \u201cthe gig economy.\u201d The gig economy refers the \u201cincreased tendency for businesses to hire independent contractors and short-term workers, and the increased availability of workers for these arrangements\u201d (Alton 2018). That means that as the gig economy grows, the nature of jobs is changing. Intuit estimates that \u201cgig\u201d workers represent 34% of the, and will grow to be 43 percent by 2020 (Gillespie 2017). These nontraditional jobs are growing at a far faster rate than traditional ones. Gig workers are usually categorized as independent contractors rather than employees, meaning they don\u2019t have health insurance through work, they bear the full cost of their self-employment taxes, they don\u2019t qualify for unemployment insurance, they don\u2019t receive works compensation through their company, the Fair Labor Standards Act minimum wage and overtime rules don\u2019t apply, they have little or no path to retribution if they face discrimination, no 401(k) matching through work, no paid leave and can\u2019t join unions because they are treated as businesses!<\/p>\n
While the category of worker \u201cindependent contractor\u201d isn\u2019t new, the proliferation of positions in the gig economy is. Additionally, because of the nature of technology, companies can have bigger influence on their independent contractors than anyone had over traditional plumbers for example. Because benefits can account for more than 30% of an employee\u2019s cost to their employer, tech companies engaged in the sharing economy and relying on independent contractors are cutting their costs and passing not only the cost, but also the uncertainty on to workers creating a new \u201cprecariat\u201d (Nova 2018).<\/p>\n
This is the economic landscape in which Millennials are expected to find work. These jobs may offer more choice and flexibility for workers, but they eliminate the form of safety net that traditional employment can\u2019t provide.<\/p>\n
Learning more about the gig economy and the precariat has made me think a lot about Millennial values; are Millennials willingly giving up the solid ground of more traditional jobs to engage in shorter term projects with far more flexibility? Do people who work in the gig economy feel more or less alienated from their labor than people who work other kinds of jobs? In the group I am interviewing, have any of the interviewees considered working these jobs? What kinds of ideas about status do these jobs hold? These are all questions I will incorporate into future interviews.<\/p>\n
Because so much of this relates to welfare and entitlements, which in the US primarily tied to the market i.e. jobs, I also did some reading about different models for welfare regimes to understand how the economic landscape may look different elsewhere. Esping-Andersen identifies three pillars of welfare: family, government and markets (Esping-Andersen 1990). When neither pillar can substitute for the two others, there is a welfare crisis (Esping-Andersen 1990). The gig economy seems to be contributing to the challenges of saving for retirement (no 401(k) matching) and affording children (no parental leave), harming the \u201cfamily\u201d welfare pillar. The market is not acting as a welfare pillar, because these jobs don\u2019t have benefits tied to them. That leaves government, which, in this political climate, we cannot expect to absorb the shock. When we called Millennials entitled, this is, at least for some of them, the economic landscape they are a part of or at least witnessing around them.<\/p>\n
Next steps: continue interviewing, continue memoing and contextualizing the interviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I focused my research this week on the changing nature of jobs, particularly in relation to \u201cthe gig economy.\u201d The gig economy refers the \u201cincreased tendency for businesses to hire independent contractors and short-term workers, and the increased availability of workers for these arrangements\u201d (Alton 2018). That means that as the gig economy grows, the … Continue reading “Log 4”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":15,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-34","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-kschutze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-kschutze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-kschutze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-kschutze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-kschutze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-kschutze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-kschutze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018-kschutze\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}