The Gig Economy

[katty]

more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-12/the-gig-economy/

Now that everyone has a project-to-project freelance career, everyone is a hustler.

No one I know has a job anymore. They've got Gigs.

Gigs: a bunch of free-floating projects, consultancies, and part-time bits and pieces they try and stitch together to make what they refer to wryly as “the Nut”—the sum that allows them to hang on to the apartment, the health-care policy, the baby sitter, and the school fees.

Gigs: They're all that’s standing between them and…what? The outer-outer boroughs? Eating what’s left of the 401(k)? Moving to Alaska? Out-and-out destitution?

To people I know in the bottom income brackets, living paycheck to paycheck, the Gig Economy has been old news for years. What’s new is the way it’s hit the demographic that used to assume that a college degree from an elite school was the passport to job security.

[aquart]

1. Gig is a wonderful word. Possibly my favorite.

It was the word for a kind of job over 4,000 years ago. What a coincidence that it means that again.

[sarcasmo]

2. My gig is taking care of my wife who is on Disability.