There was a time when 'full time' meant 40 hours a week. For which you were actually paid. And it even included a vacation, sick days, occasional overtime for which you were paid extra and - imagine this! - health care and retirement. There was even something called job security, which meant you could honestly expect to work at the same place most of your life.
There was also a time when that was considered boring and soul-destroying. People actually rebelled against the 'manacles' that such 'wage slavery' imposed on those bound to that system. Yeah, imagine that.
So, yes, that does seem like the Fantasy Land section of some hallucinatory employment theme park. The world has changed. And the inclination to sell a bit of ourselves for a tad more certainty has probably crossed more than a few minds.
Nowadays, full time has no sustained meaning. It's full time until it isnt. Or until the job is shipped to China or Bangladesh. Entry level jobs are frequently three montn 'try-outs' or 'internships.'
But human beings are nothing if not resourceful. Alternatives are emerging which provide the erstwhile employee with a semblance of balance, choice and, mirabile dictu, control (or at least some leverage). We are referring to the 'sharing economy' in which organizations accumulate and market the skills of others to those willing to pay for off-loaded responsibility. It may seem beneath the pay grade of those with college degrees and ambition - but then that could describe many job types today. As the following article explains, the sharing economy offers options to many, especially those between opportunities or still trying to figure whether they really have what it takes to make it as an artist, writer or actor.
For those with marketable skills, it also offers the chance to dictate some terms of employment. In return for less security and pay than many had hoped to have, it at least provides the ability to reject or reduce exposure to unpleasant bosses and conditions endemic in other fields. It may not be perfect, but it may be better than the alternatives. And lots of people are noticing. JL
Justin Johnson reports in VentureBeat:
Most of the people I meet who are on the supply side of the sharing economy are working between jobs or to using these services to supplement their incomes. Thought these conversations, I have a feeling 2013 is going to be a year where we start to hear about people leaving full-time employment to do a combination of different shared services so they can have a more flexible schedule. I hop in a car from Lyft, the on-call ride-sharing startup in San Francisco, and I start talking with the driver. She’s a 26-year-old with a Master’s degree and has worked for startups for a few years. A few months ago, she left her job to take some time to figure out what’s next and learn to code.
To make ends meet, she did some research about part-time work. She started out by putting her room on Airbnb and doing a couple tasks a week via TaskRabbit. Now she’s driving her car a couple days a week on Lyft. The combination of these three things is making her more money than she made working full time. Plus, she feels like she’s working for herself without the risk of starting her own company.
To get a better understanding of these trends, I chatted with several folks from TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Lyft, and Getaround. They are all growing rapidly, expanding to new markets, and on-boarding as many new “sharers” as they can, as fast as they can.
For example, Johnny Brackett of TaskRabbt told me that the company currently has more than 4,000 “Rabbits” on-boarded to their platform and have a waiting list of more then 10,000 people waiting to offer their services to local communities.
Logan Green, CEO and co-founder of Lyft, is tight-lipped about specific statistics involving his community, but he told me that the people signing up to drive for Lyft run the full gambit of backgrounds and experience. He gave me one example of a preschool teacher who is a Lyft driver in her spare time so she can get some adult interactions and a PHD student who drives to get his mind off research for a little bit.
Meg Murray, a marketer at Getaround, said the company has more then 10,000 cars listed for rent on their platform with the average active renter making around $350 per month, and one renter making as much as $1,300 per month.
The average worker for TaskRabbit runs two to three tasks per day and earns $45. A highly specialized Rabbit can make much more per task and bring in as much as $6000 per month.
Airbnb communications pro Emily Joffrion tells me that the company has more than 250,000 properties listed in 34,000 cities across 192 countries around the world. I also got some specific information about San Francisco. Emily tells me that occasional renters in the city can make between $6,900 and $9,300 annually. I also know from experience that at least three friends of mine living in SF at minimum cover their rent by putting rooms on AirBnB. Sometimes they make more.
So based on these numbers we can make some assumptions about what a person should be able to make doing tasks for the whole of 2013. Let’s say this is a woman in San Francisco with no traditional job who is willing to work in the shared economy up to 40 hours per week and has an apartment and a four-door car.
■Renting her apartment out occasionally on Airbnb, she can make: $667/month or $8,000/year
■Doing two to three tasks per day on TaskRabbit five days a week, she can make: $2,000/month or $24,000/year
■Lyft told me driving part-time she could make: $750/month or $9000/year
■When not using her car, she can supplement income from Getaround: $350/month and do as needed
Based on these numbers, an individual with no specialized skills should be able to make an average of $41,000 per year. If he or she has specialized skills, the opportunity could be much greater.
Considering people trying to do this get to make and manage their own schedules and effectively be their own boss, this could be an enticing number. I don’t see why it couldn’t be a regular thing to hear people start saying, “I left my job to do tasks on TaskRabbit and drive for Lyft.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment