Recently hearing the term Gig Economy caught my attention. I hadn’t thought much about but as consultants what we do in the employment agency industry it is a big part of it. Where did this term gig come from? Musicians call their performances that are paid as gigs and some cool people refer to their jobs that are temporary as gigs. Put another way, the term “gigging” implies being employed or having paid work.
Today a gig could be a temporary job in terms of length of employment. In the employment industry, we often refer to these assignments as either temporary or contract as it is usually for a defined period of time. Gigs can be full-time work hours and other times they are part-time hours.
Well, as it is a kind of finding work, with our robust economy which is sitting at 4.0% unemployment it looks like all is well. several economists believe that these figures are misleading. This leads to the requirement of taking on an extra job or two a large number of Americans just to make ends meet and the feeling of prosperity is not being felt by many. If we look at the data we can see that people tend to switch jobs several times throughout their career so gig economy can be considered as an evolution to that trend.
We know that in the employment industry, one among every five workers in the workforce is flexible or contingent hourly labor. Several people are preferring contract employment because they can enjoy flexible work hours, better balance in life and work or a means to remain engaged in the workforce while having their people and technical skills sharp. These professionals could be working on assignment or working part-time or until a better opportunity comes along, while employment numbers count W-2 statements. There are almost six million professionals [4% of labor force] that build the U.S. contingent workforce as these figures have not been tracked in past years.
When working to realize the employment numbers, capturing the gig economy is necessary. Many employers are preferring a contingent labor force at it provide them a way to remain competitive while the can control employment expense and cost. Companies know that a contingent workforce will allow them them to remain profitable and flexible when seasonal or marketing fluctuations impact sales.
The gig economy is not only about new-people who have always worked gigs but today when we are specifically talking about new technology- enabled types of jobs we refer to the “gig economy” like Pinot’s Palette, Airbnb, Uber etc.
Smart companies believes that a workforce that is flexible makes good business sense.