Freelance Workforce Keeps Growing, Increasingly by Choice

October 17, 2017

  • October 17, 2017 at 1:32 pm
    Agency says:
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    This goes is good news for the economy and the marketplace, it’s stab in the back for those who support socialist type laws, including unions.

    • October 17, 2017 at 2:32 pm
      Curious? says:
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      And yet, corporations are saying they can’t find educated long-term employees and are having a hard time convincing good employees to stay.

      This article indicated to me that the workforce is moving in this direction because employers have downgraded the way they handle their workforce. If you work for a company, don’t expect maternity leave, don’t use your vacation time, heaven forbid, if you call out sick or try to have family time. Health benefits used to be the backbone of having a traditional job, but now employers only cover the employee’s healthcare, but not the spouse. The loss of these benefits is because there are no unions to challenge the employer to a better quality of life for the employees. People who like a high quality of life just aren’t going to find it in a corporation these days.

      Combine that with education costs rising with no guarantee of work after college and people start saying, “Why bother?”. If you can start your own business or freelance work, you’ll have a better quality of life.

      I’m not sure if all these people freelancing is entirely by “Choice” or it’s the result of the workplace lacking the quality of life most people would prefer?

      • October 17, 2017 at 3:25 pm
        Jack Kanauph says:
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        I’d be interested to see the age groups of the freelancers. Are they the young millennials who prefer working their own hours and on their own?

    • October 19, 2017 at 11:04 am
      Captain Planet says:
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      This is exactly what was predicted after the ACA became law. People don’t have to be a slave to their corporate masters just for the sake of obtaining health benefits. They can risk going out on their own and purchasing their own healthcare without the threat of being denied for pre-x. Or, in the case for some folks, go without and pay the penalty. This increase is not at all surprising.

  • October 17, 2017 at 3:24 pm
    One in Five says:
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    20 percent of full-time freelancers without health insurance – that sounds like a problem to me.

  • October 17, 2017 at 3:32 pm
    Jack Kanauph says:
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    If 35% of the workforce are the freelancers, I would guess that most are not springing for medical insurance as it is expensive. This further erodes the ability of evening-out the risk exposure for medical insurance as again I guess that most freelancers are younger.
    Curious, Unions don’t help. Most businesses are not the giants but are small companies struggling to make ends meet. Just paying medical insurance for employees is becoming a big cost burden. Our rate just went up 40% last month for the same plan. Crazy.

  • October 17, 2017 at 6:10 pm
    Curious? says:
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    Thanks for the comment, Jack.
    You are correct that most business are small business. What is interesting is that when it comes to employees big businesses have more employees, and with their corporate bosses making a couple million in bonuses every year I’m not sure “struggling” would be the word to describe them.

    28.8 Million Small Businesses in the United States
    86,400 Large Businesses in the United States

    Small Businesses employ 57.9 Million people.
    Large Businesses employ 59.9 Million people.
    The top 10 largest businesses employ 5.6 Million together.

    Maybe the solution is for large businesses that have potential to take advantage of their employees to have unions and small business to have none. I always thought unions were more appropriate for large businesses anyway.



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