The Gig Economy Is Basically a Myth

The Bureau of Labor Statistics used to perform a contingent worker survey every couple of years, but they stopped doing it after 2005. Last year they started up again, which gives us a look at how the gig economy has grown since then. The closest category they have to “gig worker” is people who are on call for sporadic work, which looks like this:

In a nutshell, nothing has changed. Uber drivers might get notified of work via an app instead of a phone call, but that’s about it.

The BLS has several other definitions of contingent workers, but they don’t make any difference. No matter how you define it, contingent work hasn’t changed much since 2005:

Any way you slice it, the gig economy just isn’t a thing: it’s not large and it’s not growing. In fact, since Uber accounted for half these jobs in 2017 but none of them in 2005, it’s very likely that the non-Uber gig market has declined considerably over the past decade. The vast, vast majority of people want steady work, the same as they always have.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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