A scary-looking chart. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As the class of 2012 stumbles out of their plastic folding chairs and into the workforce, they’ll hear the same thing college graduates have been hearing since college for decades. You’re in the real world now, get a job. This is terrible advice.
Luckily, following it is near-impossible. According to Gallup, 32% of Americans aged 18-29 are underemployed or unemployed. However it is “jobs” are being counted, we’re not getting them. It can be a terrifying stat for recent-grads or anyone at the bottom end of that age spectrum, but it doesn’t have to be. We’re living in a twisty, unpredictable world, and that can’t be changed. But it can be embraced.
I’m 25, and I haven’t had a “job” since graduating – or I’ve gotten dozens of “jobs,” or something. It’s hard to keep track of, but luckily, it doesn’t matter. I’m a freelancer, and the statistics of the past are woefully unequipped to describe what are starting to look like the jobs of the future.
Here’s how the Bureau of Labor Statistics categorizes people:
People with jobs are employed.
People who are jobless, looking for jobs, and available for work are unemployed.
People who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force.
I honestly have no idea which category I, or many of my friends, might belong to. I’m looking for jobs, and available for work, so I must be unemployed. But I also have jobs, so I’m employed. That would make me neither, so I’m not in the labor force. That seems off. The best way to describe me would be “underemployed,” but that implies that I somehow require more employment than I have, which isn't true.
We’re living in what’s been called the “gig economy --” an era where security is a thing of the past and a job is dragging on when it lasts an entire year. You never make a bet without hedging it two or three times. When I get a gig, my first reaction is to get another. No day should go by without hustlin.’
The gig economy is a cruel place. It comes with all the inequalities of the old economy and throws a few more of its own in for good measure. Getting lucky once is no longer enough – every week feels like it can bring ruin or fortune. But it rewards some of the things that young people are famously good at: adaptability, flexibility, speed and reinvention. It’s intensely American, in all the best and all the worst ways. The system is rigged, but you have the feeling you can be the one to cheat it.
Horatio Alger, curiously enough, provides a model to follow for the gig economy. In his stories, the hero is always a hard-working, industrious young lad. But he never actually gets ahead because of that. He does some thing for the right guy at the right time, and he’s showered with success. The lesson isn’t to work hard all the time – it’s to work fast at the right time. The gig economy rewards precision over attrition.
There are a lot of problems with gigging -- the lack of security doesn't play well with having a family, which I don't. Health insurance goes to people with jobs -- gigging requires either an invincible mindset, perfect health or a higher income. And there's no unemployment for people who were never technically employed. The troubling likelihood of failing every day of the week except one can be a punishing mental burden. But there's always going to be a tradeoff between security and freedom. The classic American Dream is a struggle between those two poles -- the white picket fence and the open road. The best way to deal with the impossibility of the former is to realize you already have the latter.
The world has yet to adapt to this changing notion of employment – Sara Horowitz, head of the Freelancer’s Union, has written extensively on Washington’s inability to deal with the jobs of the new economy. But being out ahead is scary for all the right reasons. You’ll be making it up as you go along, but you’ll have something else along the way. Traditional employment asks you to get a job first and a life second. Freelancing knows that those two can be one and the same.
