Win in a world of increasing choice by becoming the clear, unique fit. The gig economy is made up of project-based, or on-demand services, that can be provided by anyone. The common denominator in the gig economy is technology, so our modern online-lives provide the perfect marketplace for the ever-diversifying opportunities in the gig economy. By some estimates, 2020 will see half of all workers involved in the gig economy. Are we ready for this seismic shift in our work lives? ​Freelancers need to clearly answer “Why choose you?” so that they stand out in the new economy. Because all workers in the gig economy need to bluntly pose this question to themselves, The Gig Is Up is designed to answer this one key point head-on, giving readers innovative tools like Unique Value Proposition to confidently step up. The Gig Is Up offers the best boots-on-the-ground methods for success, by evolving the reader’s perspective and process. Many books on the gig economy focus on letting people live out their dreams, instead of looking at the realities of what it truly takes to win in a world of increasing choice. People need to understand how to compete and how to put the best version of themselves up front and center. The goal in competing today is to not only be chosen, but to move toward becoming the only choice, over and over again

Today, most Americans are working in the gig economy--mixing together short-term jobs, contract work, and freelance assignments. Learn how to embrace the independent and self-sufficient world of freelance! The Gig Economy is your guide to this uncertain but ultimately rewarding world. Packed with research, exercises, and anecdotes, this eye-opening book supplies strategies--ranging from the professional to the personal--to help you leverage your skills, knowledge, and network to create your own career trajectory. In this book, you will learn how to: Construct a life based on your priorities and vision of success Cultivate connections without networking Create your own security Build flexibility into your financial life Face your fears by reducing risk Corporate jobs are not only unstable--they’re increasingly scarce. It’s time to take charge of your own career and lead the life you want, one immune to the impulsive whims of an employer looking only at today’s bottom line. Start mapping out your place in the gig economy today!

Why the Gig Academy is the dominant organizational form within the higher education economy—and its troubling implications for faculty, students, and the future of college education. Over the past two decades, higher education employment has undergone a radical transformation with faculty becoming contingent, staff being outsourced, and postdocs and graduate students becoming a larger share of the workforce. For example, the faculty has shifted from one composed mostly of tenure-track, full-time employees to one made up of contingent, part-time teachers. Non-tenure-track instructors now make up 70 percent of college faculty. Their pay for teaching eight courses averages $22,400 a year—less than the annual salary of most fast-food workers. In The Gig Academy, Adrianna Kezar, Tom DePaola, and Daniel T. Scott assess the impact of this disturbing workforce development. Providing an overarching framework that takes the concept of the gig economy and applies it to the university workforce, this book scrutinizes labor restructuring across both academic and nonacademic spheres. By synthesizing these employment trends, the book reveals the magnitude of the problem for individual workers across all institutional types and job categories while illustrating the damaging effects of these changes on student outcomes, campus community, and institutional effectiveness. A pointed critique of contemporary neoliberalism, the book also includes an analysis of the growing divide between employees and administrators. The authors conclude by examining the strengthening state of unionization among university workers. Advocating a collectivist, action-oriented vision for reversing the tide of exploitation, Kezar, DePaola, and Scott urge readers to use the book as a tool to interrogate the state of working relations on their own campuses and fight for a system that is run democratically for the benefit of all. Ultimately, The Gig Academy is a call to arms, one that encourages non-tenure-track faculty, staff, postdocs, graduate students, and administrative and tenure-track allies to unite in a common struggle against the neoliberal Gig Academy.

Management & Workplace Culture Book of the Year, 2020 Porchlight Business Book Awards A Publishers Weekly Fall 2020 Big Indie Book The dark side of the gig economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc.) and how to make it equitable for the users and workers most exploited. When the “sharing economy” launched a decade ago, proponents claimed that it would transform the experience of work—giving earners flexibility, autonomy, and a decent income. It was touted as a cure for social isolation and rampant ecological degradation. But this novel form of work soon sprouted a dark side: exploited Uber drivers, neighborhoods ruined by Airbnb, racial discrimination, and rising carbon emissions. Several of the most prominent platforms are now faced with existential crises as they prioritize growth over fairness and long-term viability. Nevertheless, the basic model—a peer-to-peer structure augmented by digital tech—holds the potential to meet its original promises. Based on nearly a decade of pioneering research, After the Gig dives into what went wrong with this contemporary reimagining of labor. The book examines multiple types of data from thirteen cases to identify the unique features and potential of sharing platforms that prior research has failed to pinpoint. Juliet B. Schor presents a compelling argument that we can engineer a reboot: through regulatory reforms and cooperative platforms owned and controlled by users, an equitable and truly shared economy is still possible.

“An engaging, humorous, revealing, and refreshingly human look at the bizarre, life-threatening, and delightfully humdrum exploits of everyone from sports heroes to sex workers.” -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Coercion, Ecstasy Club, and Media Virus This wide-ranging survey of the American economy at the turn of the millennium is stunning, surprising, and always entertaining. It gives us an unflinching view of the fabric of this country from the point of view of the people who keep it all moving. The more than 120 roughly textured monologues that make up Gig beautifully capture the voices of our fast-paced and diverse economy. The selections demonstrate how much our world has changed--and stayed the same--in the three decades prior to the turn of the millennium. If you think things have speeded up, become more complicated and more technological, you're right. But people's attitudes about their jobs, their hopes and goals and disappointments, endure. Gig's soul isn't sociological--it's emotional. The wholehearted diligence that people bring to their work is deeply, inexplicably moving. People speak in these pages of the constant and complex stresses nearly all of them confront on the job, but, nearly universally, they throw themselves without reservation into coping with them. Instead of resisting work, we seem to adapt to it. Some of us love our jobs, some of us don't, but almost all of us are not quite sure what we would do without one. With all the hallmarks of another classic on this subject, Gig is a fabulous read, filled with indelible voices from coast to coast. After hearing them, you'll never again feel quite the same about how we work.

Choose your hours, choose your work, be your own boss, control your own income. Welcome to the sharing economy, a nebulous collection of online platforms and apps that promise to transcend capitalism. Supporters argue that the gig economy will reverse economic inequality, enhance worker rights, and bring entrepreneurship to the masses. But does it? In Hustle and Gig, Alexandrea J. Ravenelle shares the personal stories of nearly eighty predominantly millennial workers from Airbnb, Uber, TaskRabbit, and Kitchensurfing. Their stories underline the volatility of working in the gig economy: the autonomy these young workers expected has been usurped by the need to maintain algorithm-approved acceptance and response rates. The sharing economy upends generations of workplace protections such as worker safety; workplace protections around discrimination and sexual harassment; the right to unionize; and the right to redress for injuries. Discerning three types of gig economy workers—Success Stories, who have used the gig economy to create the life they want; Strugglers, who can’t make ends meet; and Strivers, who have stable jobs and use the sharing economy for extra cash—Ravenelle examines the costs, benefits, and societal impact of this new economic movement. Poignant and evocative, Hustle and Gig exposes how the gig economy is the millennial’s version of minimum-wage precarious work.

Companies and organizations around the world are being confronted with alarming challenges--a global pandemic, market shocks, climate change, political instability. But in these unsettled times, organizational analyst Jane McConnell reveals that managers and executives have a secret weapon on their side: an overlooked group of employees that share "the gig mindset"--a freelancer-style knack for improvisation, adaptability and innovation that offers a crucial key to the future. Found at all levels of the organizational workforce but often stifled by managers, gig mindsetters are disruptors who upend business as usual and bridge gaps while achieving surprising outcomes and charting new directions. In The Gig Mindset Advantage, McConnell brings her decades of research into workforce culture, organizational strategy and digital transformation to bear on this unrecognized breed of employee whose way of working offers a wake-up call to managers and executives--and a bold new pathway towards long-term success and resilience.

An analysis that traces the role of digital technology in multiplying precarity. Technoprecarious advances a new analytic for tracing how precarity unfolds across disparate geographical sites and cultural practices in the digital age. Digital technologies--whether apps like Uber built on flexible labor or platforms like Airbnb that shift accountability to users--have assisted in consolidating the wealth and influence of a small number of players. These platforms have also furthered increasingly insecure conditions of work and life for racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities, women, indigenous people, migrants, and peoples in the global south. At the same time, precarity has become increasingly generalized, expanding to include even the creative class and digital producers themselves.

"A startling exposé of the invisible human workforce that powers the web--and how to bring it out of the shadows. Hidden beneath the surface of the internet, a new, stark reality is looming--one that cuts to the very heart of our endless debates about the impact of AI. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri unveil how the services we use from companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast human labor force that is kept deliberately concealed. The people who do 'ghost work' make the internet seem smart. They perform high-tech, on-demand piecework: flagging X-rated content, proofreading, transcribing audio, confirming identities, captioning video, and much more. The shameful truth is that no labor laws protect them or even acknowledge their existence. They often earn less than legal minimums for traditional work, they have no health benefits, and they can be fired at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked in this 'ghost economy,' and that number is growing every day. In this unprecedented investigation, Gray and Suri make the case that robots will never completely eliminate 'ghost work' and the unchecked quest for artificial intelligence could spark catastrophic work conditions if not stopped in its tracks. Ultimately, they show how this essential type of work can create opportunity--rather than misery--for those who do it."--Dust jacket.