The future of work
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The attached policy study appeared in the Summer 2016 edition of National Affairs.
In recent years, more than a few Americans in public life have spoken of a revolutionary “gig economy” that, through websites and smartphone apps, is providing new types of work opportunities and new ways of linking consumers with service providers. Some say this new economy — dominated by firms like Uber, Lyft and TaskRabbit — has produced positive effects, such as newly flexible work arrangements, increased innovation, increased self-employment, and a dominance of small employers. Others, however, say it has produced mostly negative ones: increased temporary employment, decreased job security and less full-time work for many Americans.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — until recently, a presidential candidate — declared in October of last year that “an important truth facing us in this election…is that the American economy is fundamentally transforming” in the direction of new employer-employee relationships. The center-left Markle Foundation largely agrees. “America is in the midst of the biggest economic transformation in over a hundred years,” the foundation wrote in announcing its multiyear, multimillion-dollar Rework America project, which is intended to explore the new nature of work in America’s digital economy.
While Rubio is enthusiastic about this new gig economy, and Markle generally optimistic, not everyone feels the same way. To Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, current trends “are polarizing our economy” and leaving many Americans to make “extra money renting out a small room, designing websites, selling products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car.” Clinton frets that this transformation is “raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.”
Read the full study here.
