Gig Economy Heightens Income Inequality

Dive deeper into income inequality and find that it is also happening between companies.

“a company in the 90th percentile grew by 36% in the 30-odd years they studied, while pay only rose by 6% at firms in the 25th percentile” – Quartz

Companies in the middle did even worse, with pay not rising. The reason may be the tendency of large corporations increasingly relying on turning employees into contractors. The corporations tend to keep the highly-skilled jobs and hire out the lower-skilled jobs. In the past, raises were relatively equally shared throughout the corporations; but now, those raises are going to the highly-skilled and more highly-paid employees but not being shared with the contractors. As more people become contractors, a smaller set of people have much higher wages than the rest.

“From 1995 to 2015, the share of Americans working as contractors or in temporary positions increased from 10% to nearly 16%.” – Quartz

“in Germany the percentage of workers employed by “temp agencies or cleaning, logistics, or security firms” grew from 2% to 7% from 1981 to 2008” – Quartz

A recovering economy is helping fewer than in previous recoveries.

“Income Inequality Is Getting Worse Between Companies, Too” – Quartz