Book Review: Gigged - The End of the Job and the Future of Work

We're behind on our reading, but did manage to get to Gigged - The End of the Job and The Future of Work.

It's written by journalist Sarah Kessler, who's been covering the gig economy since 2011. 

The book profiles a mix of gig workers, including an Uber driver, a computer programmer, someone working via Mechanical Turk and a few others.

The theme that unites them is they all get work via an online marketplace or platform.

The book's bottom line on the gig economy is for those with the right skills (like the computer programmer), the gig economy provides a flexible, interesting and lucrative alternative to a traditional job.

But for those without the right skills, Kessler describes gig work as "the best of bad options".

That the gig economy has good and bad sides is something our research has clearly shown since we started digging into this topic a decade or so ago.

So we agree with the book's point that for many the gig economy is "the best of bad options".  We also agree with the book's suggestion that need new laws and a new social contract to make gig work safer, fairer and more secure.

It would also be nice to make traditional jobs safer, more secure and more lucrative. Then people could choose between good options instead of bad.

Overall we very much like Gigged. It provides insights on the struggles many gig workers face while also showing there are people who are thriving as gig workers. 

But we do have one major quibble: it only profiles people who are working, or trying to work, full-time or close to full-time in the gig economy.

This ignores a very important attribute of the gig economy. It provides millions of people a low friction, highly flexible, part-time way to supplement their income. 

And since the majority of people working in the gig economy do so part-time, this, in our opinion, is a big miss.

But we still highly recommend Gigged to anyone interested in the gig economy and/or the future of work. 

It's well written, easy to read and covers both the good and bad of the gig economy from the point of view of those working in it.

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