There Are Two Gig Economies
One is huge, skews old and isn’t growing. The other is smaller, younger and harder to measure, but it shouldn’t be ignored.
Contract work is a lot of things.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
The gig economy or freelance economy or free-agent nation or whatever you prefer to call it sounds like it’s something for the young folk. That’s certainly the impression one gets from the Freelancing in America 2018 survey released in September by online talent marketplace Upwork Inc. and the Freelancers Union, which broadly defines freelancers to include people who mix occasional gigs with full- or part-time jobs:
The first-ever Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of “electronically mediated employment,” conducted in May 2017, also found a skew toward youth, albeit a less pronounced one, among those who reported doing “short jobs or tasks that workers find through mobile apps that both connect them with customers and arrange payment for the tasks.”