1. The Gig Economy, Crowdwork and New Forms of Labor
Disproportionate Income Differentials:
A Long Walk to Social Justice
Cape Town, South Africa
April 18, 2017
Wilma B. Liebman
Former Chairman and Member ( )
National Labor Relations Board
Visiting Distinguished Scholar
Rutgers University
School of Management and Labor Relations

2. The Debates
What are we talking about? What is the Gig Economy? What is Crowdwork?
The data debate: What are the facts about alternative work arrangements?
Promise and/or peril? What about inequality? Cause perpetuate, or reduce?
The legal debate: Employment and beyond. Is the law in the way?
Continuity and/or change: What’s old and what’s new in this debate?
How to respond to the digital revolution? The future of work debate: Do we need a new social contract? And if so, what would that look like?

3. The Growth of Alternative Work Arrangements
Larry Katz (Harvard) and Alan Kruger (Princeton):
From , alternative work arrangements or “gigs” have increased rapidly, up about 50%. Fastest growth is in workers hired through contract firms, rising from .6% of workers to 3.1%. Largest numbers are independent contractors.
Most of that growth has been offline: in temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, workers hired through contract firms and independent contractors (freelancers).
The online gig economy has been growing rapidly, but is still very small, at about .5% of all workers.
Uber could represent ½ to 2/3 of all online gig work.
All net U.S. employment growth since 2005 appears to be in alternative employment arrangements.

4. Online Labor Platform Economy
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Institute (November 2016):
Growth in participation in the online platform economy continued to grow through first half 2016, but growth slowed, compared to earlier periods.
Growth peaked in 2014 and has slowed since then.
Monthly earnings from labor platforms have fallen by 6% since June 2014, a trend that coincides with wage cuts by some platforms.
Turnover in the online platform economy is high.
As the traditional labor market has strengthened, the non-employed are more likely than the employed to participate on labor platforms and to continue after 12 months.

5. Amazon Mechanical Turk

6. America’s severe income inequality problem has been graphically depicted as a tale of two economies. This chart explains everything you need to know about inequality. Between 1930 and 1980 (top left of the chart), only the bottom 90% saw their incomes rise substantially. After 1980 (top of the chart), only the top 1% saw their incomes rise.
Policy Options Matrix 6

7. The Larger Context: We are Sitting on a Tinderbox & Technology is only one of Multiple Pressures that Could Ignite it
End of the American Dream?
End of Good Jobs/Standard Employment?
Income Inequality
Movement toward Populism
Backlash against Trade—Winners & Losers
Social Tensions
Fear that Technology “Eat” our Jobs?
Sitting on an tinderbox that could explode
The central challenge of our time is to create more good jobs, get wages and living standard moving upward, an to restore confidence in our institutions.
key sources of the pressures we are feeling today.
Source:
Thomas Kochan MIT Sloan School