Content Weapons Primer: Gig Economy

Gig economy is a free market system which holds temporary job positions, made available by established organizations with workers that are independent and engaged for a brief period of time. Gig economy is a part of a changing culture and business environment that includes a shared economy, barter, and gift economy.

The word GIG is a slang that means a job which is specified for some time; the term is usually used with musicians more than every other artisan. A classic example of gig employers in the workplace are freelancers, contractors and temporary staff that is majorly made up of part-time hires.

Gig Workers; this can be classified into two categories which are labor providers and goods providers. Labor providers include drivers and delivery men while artists and artisans fall under the goods providers.

The increase trend of gig economy has raised several studies and has led to series of predictions among which is that 40% of workers in America would be independent contractors in 2020. Since 1995, when digitization truly began to kick in, effort performance (output per hrs. operated) in the USA has actually grown at some 2.5 to 3 percent every year, with ups as well as downs enroute. No person understands exactly just how much of this development is actually an outcome reliant strictly on digitization and implementation of information technology (some economic experts think that standard measurements underestimate the overall impact); on the contrary high quality studies attribute the impact to be more in the neighborhood of 65 to 100% of productivity growth to digitization. Ok if those estimates are remotely accurate, that in the long-term the gig economy will definitely be accountable for around a 2.4 percent annual boost in the growth of the overall economy. An economic climate that develops at 2.4 percent multiplies every 30 years; so, if factors proceed, in 2025 the gig economy is going to match the 1995 physical economic situation.

Several factors affect the increase in short term jobs, they include:

Digitization

For one thing, the fact that we are in the digital age; the workforce is increasingly mobile and can be done from everywhere. It therefore means that your location does not affect the kind of job you can do; freelancers can get temporary jobs and projects from around the world and then employees can choose the best person for the project that he advertises.

Software

Increase in software packages which imply digitization has also increased the rate of Gig economy we find around. Hence, these software packages increase efficiency and then reduces the long-term jobs.

In the gig economy, businesses will be able to save off resources and get more benefit, space, and training. Also, they can contract or outsource specific projects to experts that would have been costly when maintaining permanent staffs.

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Improved work life

For the freelancer, the gig economy helps to improve work life and specialize in a skill. This gig economy model is powered by independent workers who select the jobs they want; rather than the one where persons are forced into some work positions because they are unable to get employment.

The gig economy is not a new idea, it has been there right on; in the past, people gigs have been outsourced, however, it has become prominent today because of the increased rate at which it occurs. gig economy has expanded daily with most of the rise (19% increase) being noticed from the year 2005 to 2015.

Who is part of the Gig Economy?

Technology companies; this factor has always been a big part in this gig economy, hence included in this category. Fiverr, Uber, Etsy and others can fit into this very well. These companies have a characteristic feature among which are;

● Facilitate direct business transaction between consumer and producer

● Have a flexible schedule for gig workers

● Payments are online where the owners of the platforms take a cut

My rationale for adding this direct description and breakdown of the gig economy is for you to understand that you have direct access to force multiplication regardless of your business or organization size. From sites like 99Designs and Fiverr you can have any number of creative assets generated. You can get videos, images and content of all kinds at fractions of the cost of a design department and of equal or better quality in some cases. I know this is the part that people want to scream “Business is evil” or “Technology is taking our jobs”. Not at all, your jobs are being lost because of the agency problem and the subpar work being delivered costing organizations considerably more than it should, over pricing your services or not adapting to the changing marketplace. OR it’s quite possible that the answer is all of the above. Either way, I will always side with progress for progresses sake so direct all hate mail to @cryaboutit.com.