The one difference with the BLS figures is that I have substituted the Current Employment Statistics’ (CES) larger results for temporary help service employment for the BLS Current Population Survey (CPS) data on which the CWS is based. Table I presents a modified version of the BLS surveys of 1995, 20. The New York Times reported the BLS results under the headline, “How the Gig Economy Is Reshaping Work: Not So Much.” Left Business Observer editor Doug Henwood, writing for Jacobin online similarly headlined his analysis “No, It’s Not a Gig Economy.” An Economic Policy Institute comment on the new BLS report agrees that “we are not becoming a nation of freelancers.” (6) Thus, according to the BLS figures, almost 90% of those employed hold “traditional” forms of employment - whether or not they are actually secure. The total number of employed workers, moreover, grew faster by 14,379,000 or by 10.4%. The total number of such jobs in the BLS survey grew from 14,826,000 in 2005 to 15,482,000 in 2017, a relatively small gain of 656,000 jobs or by 4.6% over 12 years. Running counter to the many impressionistic projections of growing precarious work, the new BLS survey shows a slight decline in the proportion of these forms of irregular employment, from 10.7% of the workforce in 2005 to 10.1% in 2017. This is the first such survey of “contingent and alternative employment arrangements,” as the BLS calls the various forms of irregular work, since 2005. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) finally released its long-awaited contingent worker survey (CWS) of precarious, irregular, or “non-traditional” employment. What has developed since the early 1980s is not so much a “gig economy” as a capitalist economy with its violent ups and downs and its continuous dislocations, in which working class employment and income are never secure. It’s at best a relatively small aspect of the declining conditions of the working class in the United States, and has not actually grown as a proportion of private sector employment even under the conditions of the post-2008 crisis. (4)Īs recent statistics show, however, this cluster of irregular jobs has not replaced “traditional” employment relations. (3) National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” program declared “Goodbye Jobs, Hello Gigs” and called “gig” the word of the year for 2016, despite its actual vintage. The Freelancers Union/Upwork claimed that some 54 million Americans worked freelance, a claim that brought a response from the union-backed Economic Policy Institute. Nevertheless, institutions from the National Bureau of Economic Research to the JPMorgan Chase Institute published studies of increasing irregular employment, while major newspapers reported and debated the alleged trend. Older forms of irregular work such as independent contractors, the self-employed, multiple-job holders, and temporary agency workers also figure in most accounts of the broader “gig economy.” While a “gig” has been jazz musicians’ word for a job for a long time, just who coined the term “gig economy” remains a mystery. The rise of digital platforms such as Uber and TaskRabbit seemed to point to a new workforce that some academics labelled the “precariat,” presumably a new class of workers lacking permanent employment and traditional social networks according to some academics. In the midst of these often disorienting structural shifts, some commentators and academics have seen what they believe is the rise of new types of employment inherently more unstable and irregular than those of the past half century or more. Labor force participation rates fell, and insecurity became the norm for millions displaced by such changes. This illusion was shattered with the increase in economic turbulence that characterized the neoliberal era, beginning in the early 1980s, as millions of manufacturing jobs were obliterated even as output continued to grow.Īlong with deeper crises, lean production methods and new forms of work measurement and surveillance brought not only work intensification through “constant improvement” that destroyed jobs, but also outsourcing of work to lower-paying firms often “out on the Interstate” or abroad. capitalism moved employment from agricultures to industry to often mislabelled service jobs.įor a brief period following World War Two until the mid-1970s, the system in the developed capitalist economies appeared to grant some security to sections of the working class, above all in manufacturing. As competition drives accumulation from one industry or location to another in search of profits via the ups and downs of periodic crises, it necessarily alters employment patterns and the organization of work. JOB SECURITY HAS never been a feature of capitalism. Jan and Carrol Cox, Political Activists.Latin America Crises and Contradictions.
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