"gigs"

Gig-ification - another new word! I'm learning lots of them these days. Churn rate? fascinating...Can I use 'em in scrabble? :)

This morning when I was reading the newspaper, there was an article from Frank Bass (Associated Press) entitled "Temp work masks joblessness", which further elaborated on how folks who are employed in involuntary part-time and temporary positions skew the overall unemployment statistics.

The May unemployment rate didn't take into account those workers who weren't actively searching for work (either because they have given up or because they had some specific barriers to employment like poor health, child care issues, or lack of transportation). Including these folks would increase the unemployment rate to 10.6%. But, more startling is the fact that if you include the 2.2 million "involuntary part-time workers, the unemployment rate would balloon to 16.4%.

I found it interesting that the 1.2 million part-time temporary workers the government has and will hire as census workers this year help mask the true unemployment rates. 60,000 people were hired temporarily in April 2009, but are done with their temporary assignments and will be back on the unemployment roles in the next set of statistics. Ironically (never sure if I use that word correctly), the applicant pool for temporary field employees was so strong, they finished the work far more quickly than they expected. The government expects to continue census-related temporary hiring cycles like this through the fall, which will help push down unemployment numbers during upcoming months.

Okay, back to gigification. Things are a lot tougher economically than the unemployment statistics convey. Given that fact, people need to jump at any opportunity that comes their way, part-time, temporary, gigified. I do wonder, as the economy recovers, if employers will continue to offer out "morsels" of employment instead of "fat" full-time jobs with benefits. Is gigging merely a response to the tough economic times or the wave of the future?