Are we moving to a broader freelance economy?
December 23, 2012 in Business, Freelancing
It’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot in the last few years, and I don’t think I’m any closer to knowing a definitive answer.
It’s been pretty obvious to me that the way we sell our labor has changed much since my parents’ time – the days of 30 years at company X, company funded pension plans, gold watch at retirement and company loyalty are mostly gone for all but a handful of workers in most walks of life. But what is replacing this?
Legions of temp workers and part time giggers have ostensibly served the changing needs of companies who want to be able to scale up interchangeable workers on demand, but it hasn’t served the needs of the workers all that well. I think it’s given ‘freelancing’ a bad name as well, so much so that I’d named my freelancer conference “indieconf”, to avoid the term freelance altogether (although in hindsight, perhaps I should have embraced it all the more?) Freelancing has often been seen as the stop-gap for people in-between full-time jobs – indeed, many people treat it as such, as opposed to embracing the ability to control your own life and destiny with gusto.
So, we have less job stability and security in the corporate world, but this doesn’t seem to have been replaced with true “freelancing” so much as “part timers” and “temp workers”; I don’t think this is just a semantic distinction though. The part timers and temps have, at their definition, people who likely would prefer a full-time position somewhere, and are taking the scraps because it’s all they can get.
Will freelancing become to be accepted as the ‘new normal’? Does it need a name change? Do we need more regulatory laws recognizing this type of work relationship as just as valid as others? Union organizer struggles back 100 years ago did a lot for that movement, but freelancing, almost by definition, doesn’t have that sense of collective organization.
Rich Harrison said on December 26, 2012
I think you have to look at freelancing and freelancers as a continuum. On one end we have the “hard core” freelancers that never want to work for “The Man” again and relish the freedom to do the work they were born to do whenever and wherever they want. At least while someone is willing to pay for that work. On the other end you have the folks that became a freelancer because they didn’t have a choice. And then there are a lot of data points in between representing a variety of reasons including: developing new skills they can’t learn at work, a mid-life crisis or two, having to relocate or being unable to relocate somewhere due to family or other reasons, illness or disability, etc. There are probably just about as many reasons for becoming a freelancer as there are freelancers. At least within an order a magnitude or so.
Personally, I think we’re going to see more freelancers and more freelancing opportunities especially as we move away from an industrial/factory based workforce to more knowledge based workforce. And I have no doubt that this transition will probably be even more disruptive to our society and laws than the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one.
Michael Kimsal said on December 26, 2012
I do think we’ll see more opportunities, but I fear that many will be for people freelancing by necessity, not by choice. As such, the market will be a bit more one-sided than I’d like to see it, and I don’t think the idea of knowledge-worker self-employment will get the recognition that it needs. I’m thinking primarily legally and socially – legally it’s harder to collect on bad debts, it’s harder to get insurance, and so on. Socially, there still often feels like there’s less status or real understanding, but that may be just wishful thinking – most people don’t really understand what accountants do either.
Rich Harrison said on December 27, 2012
I agree that there will be more people “freelancing by necessity” and many of these folks won’t have the basic freelancing skills to be as successful at this as they could be. I think this is big part of what continues to give freelancing a bad name if you will.
I also think the we’re going to see more small businesses looking to “outsource” tasks and functions that are part of their core business. Payroll, bookkeeping/accounting, HR, web design/maintenance, social media, etc. are all tasks/functions that most small businesses need but could be performed by a freelancer just as well and, in many cases, don’t require the person to be a given location at a given time to perform the work.