The gig economy is fundamentally changing the US workforce. Understanding its size and scope is crucial to identifying how gig work can contribute to Americans’ financial security. The Institute’s Future of Work Initiative, Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and the Rockefeller Foundation recently convened a Gig Economy Data Roundtable in New York that brought together nearly 40 experts to explore new employment trends. Senator Mark Warner, the honorary cochair of the Future of Work Initiative, delivered opening remarks about the significance of gig and independent workers (see “Work Reimagined,” page 72). Princeton University’s Alan Krueger, who serves on the Future of Work Initiative’s National Advisory Council, presented his latest efforts to collect more and better data. One major obstacle to good research on the gig economy is a lack of agreement on basic definitions of “independent work.” The roundtable also explored the diversity of gig workers’ experiences and previewed the Gig Economy Data Hub, a new website from the Future of Work Initiative and Cornell that aggregates and explains relevant data. After all, better information means better policies.
aspeninstitute.org/future-of-work
New Data on New Gigs
Publications Section 4: Strengthening Practices to Improve Job Quality
Tools: Employee Ownership
View tools and resources related to employee ownership.
Job Quality Fellows Profile Series Longform
Centering Workers in Workforce Development
The Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance collaborates with employers and stakeholders to boost employment, earnings, and equity for local workers.
Job Quality Fellows Profile Series Longform
Lessons and Leadership To Foster Economic Justice for Illinois Workers
LEP trains workers to promote equity, enforce rights, build unions, develop leaders, ensure workplace safety, and advance economic justice.
Job Quality Fellows Profile Series Longform
Worker Owned and Worker Driven
While the rideshare apps have increased convenience, they’ve eroded job quality. See how the Drivers’ Cooperative is helping to end exploitative conditions.
Job Quality Fellows Profile Series Longform
Creating Employee-Owned Businesses That Provide Good Jobs and Succeed
Through employee ownership, The Industrial Commons is building a new Southern working class that erases the inequities of generational poverty.
Job Quality Fellows Profile Series Longform
Strengthening the Hidden Resilience Workforce
We see the effects of climate change, but we rarely see the people who help to rebuild — and they often lack safe conditions, decent pay, or benefits.
Job Quality Fellows Profile Series Longform
Advancing a Pro-Worker, Pro-Climate Agenda in Texas
The Texas Climate Jobs Project advances a pro-worker, pro-climate agenda — helping to solve the climate crisis while creating millions of good jobs.
Job Quality Fellows Profile Series Longform
Organizing and Coalition Building for Structural Change
LAANE, led by Job Quality Fellow Roxana Tynan, is fighting to build an economy rooted in good jobs, thriving communities, and a healthy environment.
Job Quality Fellows Profile Series Longform
Organizing Unemployed and Underemployed Workers
UWU, led by Job Quality Fellow Neidi Dominguez, engages unemployed/underemployed workers, a population that has not been mobilized at scale since the 1930s.
Longform
How Local Journalism Can Bring Communities Together
MIT Center for Constructive Communication Director Deb Roy explains how the caricatures Republicans and Democrats paint of each other diverge from reality, and the ways local newsrooms can leverage their “trust capital” and emerging technology to promote listening and understanding amid disagreement.