Gig economy: Employment for all
The International Labour Organisation or ILO has come up with grim news, estimating that around 205 million people will be jobless by 2022. An additional 108 million workers worldwide too have been categorized as poor or extremely poor after the COVID-19 outbreak as compared to 2019. This, the ILO states, has undone five years of progress towards the eradication of working poverty, which makes achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating poverty by 2030 even more difficult. In these times, as COVID-19 continues to extract a toll from the planet in terms of restrictions on people’s movement, manufacturing and production, gig work seems to be a reasonable solution when it comes to providing people with a source of income. Minus defined office spaces as work from home gets to be the norm, organizations are also finding it worthwhile to get freelancers to complete pending tasks and to finalize projects requiring inputs of experts. As gig services are also priced low, there’s a real chance of consumer surplus spilling over to various businesses, generating higher incomes and jobs. Though the government needs to come up with regulations for gig companies and acknowledge their role in bringing the economy back on track after the COVID-19 pandemic is controlled, there’s no doubt that these firms are enabling people impacted by the recent layoffs to survive by hiring out their special skills.