Democrats and the Gig Economy

There’s a cottage industry of takes these days on how Democrats can again become the “party of the working class.” Many of those are reactive, defensive, operate on misleading or ill-considered concepts of what the 21st century working class even is. But today I had one of these pop into my inbox that I read and thought, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The gist is that Democrats should make themselves the party of gig workers. The title of the article is “Champion the Self-Employed.” But as author Will Norris explains, the demographic and economic profile of those technically categorized as “self-employed” has changed pretty dramatically in recent years. It still includes the generally high-earning and disproportionately white and male consultants and solo operators of various sorts. But as a group it’s now much, much larger — especially in the wake of the pandemic — and is more female and less white. It’s also much lower income, more precarious.
Want to keep reading?
Join TPM and get The Backchannel member newsletter along with unlimited access to all TPM articles and member features.