Labor market policies tend to see working age adults as either in a “good job” with regular hours or needing help getting into one. I have spent years within workforce agencies focusing on a gray zone between job placements and unemployment; breadwinners who seek work, but not a job. Could workforce agencies extend their services, standards, and income sources by taking a lead in this part of their labor market?
Our service users are called "gig workers," "involuntary partially employed" or "under-the-table workforces,” But my team and I just think of them as "work-seekers with complex lives.” If you have a medical issue that fluctuates day-to-day, ever-changing family caregiving commitments, complex parenting arrangements, or ad-hoc partial employment you enjoy, traditional scheduled-hours employment often can't meet your needs. You need hours of work that change around your unpredictable day-to-day availability.
Official data on workers in contingent and nonstandard jobs is inadequate. But a figure of 36% of US adults reliant on at least some irregular employment was independently arrived at in 2019 by both Gallup and McKinsey. These resourceful individuals are a wasted economic asset. Every time we see someone bicycling with a pizza delivery box on their back, it is worth reflecting on that person's potential; perhaps to work in childcare, logistics, construction, hospitality, retail, security, or other sectors that depend on large pools of flexible labor.
The reason work-seekers with complex lives turn to food delivery and other "gig work" tasks is the work is readily available. It pays badly; there is no progression, minimal protections, and negligible data about options or pathways. But if you are not blessed with regular availability for employment, that work, or illegal off-the-books day labor, are typically your best immediate options.
I ran a UK government program that created an online platform for all types of hour-by-hour labor in any region. The project was controversial; local governments and our National Health Service quickly grasped the value of both quality flexible workforces and the benefits of an alternative route to personalized work hours for people who can't take a job.
Twenty regions launched their own market for nonstandard labor. Each attracted a range of local stakeholders with Tesco, a supermarket and the UK's biggest private sector employer, also coming in. The service helped local economic agencies forge partnerships with businesses that needed a dependable, motivated, pool of top-up workers they could nurture and develop.
Staffing agencies will supply temporary workers, but workforce agencies have leverage, remit, and credibility to often provide a better service through an eco-system of employment intermediaries. To fund it, each organization involved charges a markup on the price paid for each hour of work. The detailed data generated about this part of any labor market showed how businesses and residents who had previously had no interest in public employment services that focused only on regular jobs became enthusiastic users of services meeting their more diverse needs.
Our operation was transferred into a nonprofit and with philanthropic funding we began exploring its relevance to workforce agencies in other countries. A first year US proof of concept was completed in Long Beach, California. More on that in a follow up article for next month's MUS Connector.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Wingham Rowan is a former television reporter who ran UK government programs that supported individuals needing alternatives to gig work. He now runs the Beyond Jobs nonprofit project. www.BeyondJobs.org
