The Pandemic, The Gig Economy And The Future of Self-Employed Work.

Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, the one thing that has surely undergone a fundamental change is the future of the self employment style of work.

Throughout the course of the pandemic, many sectors of the economy have seen serious restructurings and even staff lay offs.

The pandemic had seen a sharp increase in the demands for personal services such as freelancing, personal grocery shopping and food deliveries.

A record number of people signed up for working in the growing gig economy throughout the course of pandemic.

Due to sky high levels of recruitments, the major players in the growing gig economy were all set to change radically the ways in which people view work and employment in the twenty-first century.

In one of it’s earnings calls last year, Doordash’s CEO Tony Xu famously claimed that the company had more than 2.6 million active delivery workers on its app based platform in the United States.

If anyone needs a routine reminder about how much of an interdependent world we are living in, just look at how the gig economy works.

Thanks to the wonders of modern smartphone technology, a customer can now get their pizza delivered from their favourite local pizzeria by a local delivery person in less than twenty five minutes.

While the ordering person could be busy in the normal chores of their everyday life, they need the services and expertise of the local delivery workers and the restaurants to ensure that their food gets delivered seamlessly.

Similarly on the other hand, the restaurants and the delivery service providers would need those additional revenues coming from delivery customers in order to stay in business.

In the USA, Uber, DoorDash and Instacart, have fundamentally changed the way people and businesses look at the future of work.

For example, thanks to them, today, in the United States, there is a growing number of people demanding more workplace flexibility and more freedom in deciding when to work and how much to work.

Work flexibility and the ever greater focus on paying attention to details has led towards an increase in workplace productivity.

Correspondingly, there has also been a sharp uptick in people across the American economy resuming their tertiary education and learning new and in-demand skills.

In a recent report on this subject matter, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that many young Americans had made the move from manufacturing jobs into the services industry.

The paper also mentioned that university enrolments across the state of Georgia had skyrocketed as millennials were inching towards learning more in-demand skills.

As the focus has sharpened on workers with high end skills across the economy, there has also been a corresponding rise in wages.

This has also meant that for the first time in over a generation, workers across the board have felt empowered like never before.

The renewed efforts of enabling unionization at Starbucks and Amazon, coupled with the ensuing battle in California’s courts over the AB-5 Law and then Proposition 22 prove this point.

Workers and state governments across the USA have demonstrated over the last two years that they are willing to address these changing dynamics of work.

This is being done by employing a combination of tactics nationally, ranging from street power and public pressure to legislations where needed.

Legal battles and street protests in states such as California and Massachusetts have all but shown that self employed workers across the US economy demand and deserve better wages and protections.

This includes a legally guaranteed right to unionize and organize along with access to guaranteed retirement savings funding and health insurance benefits.

The workers and America’s corporate tech giants are drifting towards Independent Contractor Agreements (ICAs) and flexible work arrangements.

This gradual rise in self employment throughout the last couple of years has also fueled a rise in entrepreneurship and business development.

In the United States for example, the Washington Post reported in an article on April 07 that on a year on year basis till the end of September 2021, more than two thirds of counties all over the country had reported an increase in the total number of registered small business establishments.

According to the report, a large chunk of that increase was attributed to many self employed workers and entrepreneurs who had started their own businesses.

This, according to the US census bureau, roughly translates into a year-on-year increase of about 24 percent between 2019 to the end of 2021.

The website entrepreneur.com published an article on its website in December 2021, in which it noted that the cumbersome nature of the 9 to 5 job market was a thing of the past.

The article further noted that as self employed people were better able to utilize their gained experiences to solve complex challenges, they were more keen to explore alternative work arrangements and establish small businesses.

The traditional concept of adapting to change or perishing surely applies to the changing nature of work in the post-pandemic era as well.

Businesses that adapt well to these evolving trends shall continue to succeed and experience growth in our ever changing world of the twenty-first century.