But how new is this economy really? On the first day of class, Professor Pencavel quickly dispensed with the notion that self-employment is on the rise. The vast majority of workers today are employees of relatively large firms. It’s been trending this way for decades, and there’s no indication – at least none yet – that this is shifting back.
But there’s one thing gig economy boosters do get right: Contingent and often misclassified work is trendy as hell. Labor law-breaking has always been a business plan, but now it’s a particularly popular one. This is exacerbated by the tendencies of platforms to become monopolies, with total control over how prices and wages are set. Platform-captured self-employment may not make up a significant portion of the labor market today, but it’s not inconceivable that it …nts workers to be happy in a time of knowledge economy abundance, but it’s impossible to ignore how much cheaper those part-timers would be to employ.
I am all for people working less. I’m just not into how poor they are when they do that.Real, useable data on recent trends in self-employment doesn’t exist, though we can make some estimates. The market boosters who presume we’ll be 50 percent self-employed soon are lying, and the labor economists who presume self-employment won’t be shifted at all by this new market are myopic. There’s an urgency to this that seems lost on both camps. So as someone who wants to use data to tell stories about how work is and isn’t changing, I am pretty bummed.
If labor economists are concerned about the availability of full-time work as the primary means of alleviating poverty and making the economy go ‘round, they should chill out about minimum wage raises and refocus on what’s going on today. At the very least, they could debunk folks like Page.
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A new thinker to watch.
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/145101275482
