Work Disrupted

CHAPTER 3Making Alternative Work a Meaningful Opportunity: The Workforce Will Include More Part-time, Contract, Freelance, Gig, and Crowd Workers

Organizations have traditionally been sites of belonging, Now, in the world of gig work, we have to think about what it means for individuals when they have no membership at all.¹

—Amy Wrzesniewski, professor, author

When two leading labor market scholars set out to study a decade of job growth, they shed light on changes in how we work that had been underway, though largely under the radar, for decades. Examining the nine million new jobs created in the prior decade, Lawrence Katz at Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University discovered that most of these jobs were part-time, lacked consistent paychecks, and did not offer benefits. In fact, 94 percent of the new jobs created in the United States between 2005 and 2015 were “alternative” work.² Originally conceived of as contract work, “alternative” work today includes a range of work performed by outsourced teams; temporary and on-call workers; contractors; freelancers; gig workers, who are paid for tasks; and the crowd or outsourced networks.³

Katz and Krueger lifted a veil, revealing that what had been perceived as solid job growth was actually dominated by impermanent positions that generally paid less, were not secure, and lacked health insurance and other ...