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Is There a Gig Economy?
Moody, Kim
http://solidarity-us.org/atc/197/gig-economy/Date Written: 2018-11-01 Publisher: Against the Current Year Published: 2018 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX23418 A data-heavy analysis questioning whether 'gig-economy' precarious jobs are indeed growing rapidly as reported. Abstract: -- Excerpt: In other words, the structural decline of manufacturing that saw 5.7 million production and nonsupervisory jobs eliminated between 1979 and 2017 is a disproportionately large source of declining participation among men formerly in middle income jobs and, as a consequence, their growing numbers in the reserve army. Nevertheless, the annual flows of male workers out of the labor force are far greater, in size and social consequence, than the modest growth in "non-traditional" or precarious work over the last two decades. The most significant trend affecting working class people of all ages and genders, however, is the growth of "traditional" low-wage dead-end jobs, mostly within "service" sector employment, and the accompanying relative stagnation of working-class real wages that began as long ago as the 1970s. As the Economic Policy Institute has shown for the period from 1979 to 2007 those industries that have expanded, mostly services, have consistently paid less than those that have lost jobs, such as manufacturing. The National Employment Law Project estimated that by the end of 2014 42% of U.S. workers made less than $15 an hour, a proportion that would have been higher if figures had included only production and nonsupervisory workers. Subject Headings |