From "Fresh Air" on NPR
Goodbye Jobs, Hello 'Gigs': How One Word Sums Up A New Economic Reality
By Geoff Nunberg
The obvious candidates for word of the year are the labels of the year's big stories — new words like "microaggression" or resurgent ones like "refugees." But sometimes a big theme is captured in more subtle ways. So for my word of the year, I offer you the revival of "gig" as the name for a new economic order. It's the last chapter in the life of a little word that has tracked the rise and fall of the great American job....
It has been called the on-demand economy, the 1099 economy, the peer-to-peer economy, and freelance nation, among other things. But over the past year, investors, the business media and politicians seem to have settled on "the gig economy." It strikes just the right jaunty, carefree note. The Financial Times explains that in the future, work will be less secure but lots more exciting. We can make our own schedule and hours, pick the projects that interest us, work from anywhere and try our hands at different trades....
That's the image that phrases like "the gig economy" and "freelance nation" bring to mind, an economy populated by professionals and creatives, typically single millennials — people who may be willing to trade some security for the opportunity to take a month or two off to visit Patagonia. But that language doesn't get at most of the people who are cut loose in the new economy and who aren't reveling in the independence it gives them — the ill-paid temps and contingent workers that some have called the "precariat."
When you hear "freelancer" you don't think of the people cobbling together a livelihood cleaning apartments, delivering groceries and doing other people's laundry. And not many of those people think of themselves as having gigs. Unless you're a bass player, calling a job a gig is a luxury reserved for people who can pretend they don't need one....
