By Nyia Hawkins, Ambitio US Fellow
“Think of every single gig worker as a small business owner,” said Center for Cultural Innovation President and CEO Angie Kim at a recent panel discussion hosted at The Aspen Institute in Washington.
It’s the quote that defined her comments for me as I sat in the audience of the think tank event, ‘ How Benefits Make Jobs Better .’ The Institute’s now former Director of the Future of Work Initiative, Shelly Steward, moderated the discussion, which brought together voices from across the employment spectrum. The other panelists include Tonya Hallett, Amazon’s Vice President for People eXperience Technology (PXT), who spoke about the company’s innovative approaches to employee benefits, and Betsy Biemann, CEO of Coastal Enterprises, who shared success stories of small businesses making significant strides in offering competitive benefits. Panelist Emily Martin, Chief Program Officer from the National Women’s Law Center highlighted state-level policy advancements.
Though, as a fellow for CCI’s Ambitio US initiative, I am admittedly biased, the paradigm shift Kim spoke of helped frame the discussion for me and for policymakers, funders, employers, and workers who seek to address the disparities in access to benefits and protections that currently plague our labor market. That paradigm shift undergirds CCI’s Sol Center for Liberated Work (Sol), our research and advocacy arm. Sol also incubates projects that reimagine work and social protections for all workers.
So, as I looked at gig workers through the lens of entrepreneurship, I didn’t just consider the people who drive Uber or deliver for Doordash. I thought about the population of people who might be anything from architects to hair stylists, submitting 1099 tax forms around this time of year rather than — the more common — W-2s. The percentage of Americans doing freelance work is up 11% over the last decade, from 53 million in 2014 to 64 million in 2023, according to Statista.com , and that number is growing. The rise of gig and freelance work puts increasing pressure on a critical gap in our benefits and protection systems, where a significant portion of the workforce is without the safety net traditionally provided by full-time employment.
This perspective is not just a semantic shift, it is a call to action for creating a more inclusive and comprehensive benefits system. By recognizing gig workers as entrepreneurs of their own micro-enterprises, we can start to develop policies and systems that offer protections and benefits to all, irrespective of their employment status. A broadened understanding of who constitutes a worker is essential for crafting legislation and support mechanisms that reflect the realities of a rapidly changing economy.
Kim is based in California — the world’s largest sub-national economy — which has started experimenting with portable retirement benefits. Unfortunately, those benefits are “…still conferred to only those going from employer to employer and not necessarily for independent workers” said Kim. “But, those (experiments) create these bright spots of opportunity to say, “How can we expand that?”
It was also exciting to hear her bring pooled risk funds into the discussion as a financial tool to aggregate risk for sick and family leave protection for gig workers. Drawing inspiration from the successes of movements like Ambitio US grantee Debt Collective , Kim suggested that gig workers and others outside traditional employment structures can organize for greater influence and security. This collective action can drive significant change, showcasing the power of workers’ voices when mobilized around shared concerns.
This vision not only reflects an aspiration for a more equitable workforce but also underscores the urgent need for innovative thinking and collaborative problem-solving among all stakeholders.
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