Meaning
A labour market built on short-term, freelance, and on-demand jobs arranged through digital platforms, where workers are paid per task rather than employed with salaries and benefits; also the business ecosystem around such work. Standard term in economics and journalism, usually neutral in register but often critical in tone. 'Gig' itself is long-standing musicians' slang for a single booking. Neutral technical label that often carries an implied criticism of insecure work. Regional use: General English worldwide; strongest in economics, policy, and labour journalism.
Origin
The phrase is widely traced to editor Tina Brown's essay 'The Gig Economy', published on The Daily Beast on 12 January 2009, which opened 'No one I know has a job anymore. They've got Gigs' and described professionals piecing together freelance work after the financial crisis; labor scholar David Weil, as summarised on Wikipedia, notes that many trace the term to that essay. Usage grew through the 2010s alongside platforms such as Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, and Airbnb, and a 2016 study by economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger found that contingent and gig arrangements accounted for most US employment growth between 2005 and 2015. Brown is credited with popularising rather than coining the pairing, and no earlier first use is firmly documented.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- gig work
- gig worker
- platform economy
Usage Examples
- He drives for two delivery apps and tutors online, a fairly typical gig economy portfolio.
- The report argued that gig economy workers lack the protections employees take for granted.
- Cities are still rewriting licensing rules that predate the gig economy by decades.