America’s labor market continues to cool, and the gig economy is quietly absorbing some of the employment strain being felt across the country.
A new Goldman Sachs analysis found that platform-based gig work opportunities — which include major tech players like Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart — are holding up as traditional payroll growth cools.
About 20% of people who lost pay, lost a job, or had hours cut turned to gig platforms to make up the difference, the analysis said. More signs of a shrinking labor market are expected in this week’s delayed September payrolls report, which is set to be released on Thursday.
Who’s gonna take all the extra ubers if everyone is out of work and has to drive for uber to get by?
Who’s gonna order from all the extra doordashers if people have to work for doordash to afford their lunch?
And most importantly what happens when the competition between many extra doordashers drives down pay (the mechanism for which is already built in to the way gig work pays by the gig, fewer of which will be split between more drivers) means even the people working for doordash can no longer afford lunch?
This is not sustainable in the slightest. We are using bubbles to cushion our falls from other bubbles as they pop. It’s bubbles all the way down. We’re in a recession, maybe a depression, hard to say because there are so many bubbles we haven’t even reached the ground yet.