What’s the Risk? How U.S. Workers Perceive Risks to Freelancing Versus Standard Employment

• In Event: 40812 - Professions and Occupations

Abstract

A growing share of U.S. workers report freelancing, a nonstandard work arrangement where workers choose their own work hours, location, and assignments. While freelancers have more control over their working conditions, freelancers also encounter unstable pay, unpredictable schedules, and do not have access to employer-subsidized healthcare like their counterparts in traditional employment. In New York City, where over a third of all workers freelance, new associations are forming to organize workers and advocate for freelancer protections. To understand why people decide to freelance, and whether workers think of their decision as empowering or exploitative, I interviewed 52 workers in New York City from industries with roughly equal proportions of freelance workers and workers in standard employment. I find that in many cases, freelancers see their work as more stable and fulfilling than traditional employment. To protect themselves from risks to nonstandard work, I identify three strategies that freelancers turn to: diversifying their clientele, developing a two-pronged career for lucrative and passion-driven projects, and taking a preventative, holistic approach to healthcare in lieu of formal coverage. For workers in standard employment, several continued to freelance on the side, both for personal fulfillment and as added protection in case of layoffs. Using a life-course approach, I show how workers’ personal attitudes towards networking and personal branding, along with factors like family structure, exposure to layoffs, and experiences of workplace abuse together influence workers’ risk assessment of working freelance versus in standard employment. This research will contribute to sociological debates on work passion and self-exploitation, complicating previous findings that workers maintain either a passion or security driven approach to their career choices.

Author

• Erica Felice Mildner, University of British Columbia