YouthNation: Building Remarkable Brands in a Youth-Driven Culture

Chapter 8Free Agency

As the peer-to–peer economy gains traction in our increasingly urban-centric culture, a more inclusive and accessible notion of entrepreneurialism has followed. With it, there is now a growing belief within YouthNation that the traditional path to creating income, which has historically been getting a job with one company and keeping that job for life, has now been forever altered. In this new peer-driven economy there is a growing independence and with it a belief in the ability for individuals to seek several different streams of income as the new foundation for a modern day career.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 36 percent of the workforce is made up of millennials and within just 10 years will account for 75 percent of the workforce.¹ As YouthNation comes to constitute the majority of working adults, their community values and belief systems, their need for flexibility, and their hard-wired grasp of technology will likely cause a dramatic shift toward a self-employed, free agency workforce. In other words, individuals won't have jobs or employers; they will have projects and clients, and those projects will be delivered at the place and time of the worker's choosing. Soon you won't need to sit next to people that annoy you or work for bosses that don't respect you. If you are talented, you will rise to the top and have a portfolio of skills that you can shop to the highest bidder.

For large companies and workers alike, this creates ...