THE GIG economy is one of the main causes of immiseration for younger generations across many countries.
At first glance, the gig economy supports the labor market by giving job seekers an alternative to formal employment. Gigs, like food deliveries and online contract work, is an acceptable short-term solution to unemployment as long as it is short-term.
Unfortunately, most gig jobs are no longer short-term, and they conceal the problem of long-term unemployment.
Consider these numbers. According to an Insiderph report, 22% of the Philippine economy is engaged in gig work. For comparison, in Japan, the number rises to 37% and in China, it’s around 40%. In the United States, the number is 10.2%. Throughout Southeast Asia, the gig economy averages out to around 11%.
To be part of the gig economy usually means not having access to the same benefits that a typically normal job or career offers. Of course, for the unemployed, having access to a source of income is better than having no income at all, but this ignores the deeper problem. If 20%, 30% or 40% of your job market is gig work, what does it say about the state of your society’s labor market?
In the case of the Philippines, we’ve always had short term, informal or contractual labor, but the assumption was that as we develop, jobs will become more formalized.
It seems that informal employment has not only remained, in some ways, it has metastasized. Companies are no longer willing to invest in their workers, as in previous decades, and global trends are not optimistic. Unless artificial intelligence (AI) can somehow fix these problems, employment and income will become growing issues in the future.
Gig jobs may be a viable source of income, but they cannot help people who have no health insurance or social security. They cannot help people who are unable to advance professionally, nor can they help a country’s stagnant or declining fertility rate.
In short, they are a symptom of weak job markets/PN
