The Gig Economy

Have you ever dreamt of working anywhere in the world or being your own boss?

There are even entire Reddit threads dedicated to it. Thanks to a new type of job market called the “gig economy,” this dream may not be that far off.

The gig economy is an environment of the workplace made up of short-term jobs, temporary contracts and independent contractors exist. Jobs included in this type of economy are micro-tasking jobs like Amazon Mechanical Turk and Task Rabbit and online or freelance work. Online work could include teaching languages or online courses on marketplaces such as iTalki, Udemy or Skillshare.

According to Forbes, the start of the gig economy can be traced back to the worldwide financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Workers would pick up side hustles to increase their income if their hours at their main job were cut due to the employer not having enough money to pay employees their normal salary.

According to Entrepreneur, the highest earning jobs in the gig economy include data scientists, web developers and jobs involving virtual reality. These jobs pay anywhere from $50 to more than $100 per hour.

Some freelancers may turn to flea markets to sell their goods including one in the town of Essex.

Sandra Lypps started a flea market at St. Paul’s Anglican Church to act as a fundraiser for the church and give businesspeople a place to sell their work.

“We are always looking into fundraising ideas for the church and the priest had brought up the idea of a farmer’s market and selling produce and that sort of thing, but that didn’t work out so well, so we turned it into a crafter’s market where local business people and entrepreneurs can sell their goods and it acts as a fundraiser for us,” said Lypps.

Lypps says they usually have a decent number of vendors per market.

Types of goods that are sold at the market include Tupperwear, Epicure, Sentsy and handmade goods such as knitted hats, wooden signs and wreaths.

Despite this type of economy growing, freelancing is not always easy.

Lypps tried to start a writing business, but it has not been easy to get it off the ground.

“The last thing I had, in terms of anything writing-related was somebody contacted me about doing edits on Wikipedia, to do edits on Wikipedia and he didn't have time to do them so he was going to pay me so much per edit to do them sounded like it could be just a big pain. So, I said no,” said Lypps.

Another aspect of the gig economy is known as a digital nomad lifestyle. In this lifestyle, remote workers travel the world and work from anywhere with access to the internet. . According to Tortuga, the term digital nomad was first used in 1997. There are even entire sub-Reddits dedicated to this type of lifestyle. The digital nomad lifestyle has become popular in parts of Europe and Asia such as Chiang Mai, Thailand, Bali and Lisbon, according to the Nomad List.

Kate Smith runs a digital nomad coaching business called the Remote Nomad.

Smith left a job at a marketing agency in Toronto to travel the world remotely in June of 2015 and has been to approximately 25 countries.

“A lot of people were reaching out to me and were like, ‘I that’s really cool what you are doing, how do I do it.’ And that was a common comment people came to me with. I clearly want to work and travel. I really want to do it, but I can’t see how to get from here to here,” said Smith. “So, I would try to get on calls with people for an hour and explain it, but there is just so much to it,” said Smith.

According to Investopedia, one of the criticisms of the gig economy is freelancers are cheaper to hire than full-time employees and it makes it harder for full-time employees to develop into their careers.

Despite this, Brandy Pyne, employment counsellor supervisor for the Unemployed Help Centre of Windsor thinks the gig economy will continue to grow.

“I believe there will continue to be opportunities as this method of work is appealing to some companies offering greater flexibility with location and hours and workers’ availability. This method of work can save money, time and overhead costs,” said Pyne.

Though more jobs are going remote, Pyne says not all jobs are remote.

“More opportunities have opened however the majority of jobs are not this type. Some businesses certainly do benefit from the ability to work remotely as it eliminated workspace boundaries and allows a worker to be mobile,” said Pyne.

The gig economy seems to be here to stay and more people will start to join the gig economy to work remotely. According to Pyne, the gig economy will continue to grow as more retirees join the workforce again.