The venn diagram of contract workers is not a perfect overlap with "gig" work. Just because you're self-employed, selling your services to others on a contract basis, doesn't make that gig work.
>Just because you're self-employed, selling your services to others on a contract basis, doesn't make that gig work.
doesn't it? as far as i can tell, the only distinction between "gig economy" and contract workers is that contract workers actually get paid at rates that make it sustainable and that being between contracts isn't a catastrophe, whereas jobs classed as "gig economy" pay low enough to keep the workers desperate for the next gig.
Most gig work is done through middlemen/platforms where only some contract work like that exists and typically for longer engagements (ie: through agencies and temp staffing).
Contractors also have more flexibility to develop a relationship with the “client” for better opportunties down the road without the middleman/platform interfering.
No, it really doesn't. If anything, your observation of "low paying", which is often a defining characteristic of "gig" work, is sufficient to not to apply the term to more general contract-work employment situations. It is much more comparable to consider them in the same category as "temp worker". Enough so that the wikipedia page for is flagged as a candidate for for the two to be merged.
Other than the fact that celebrities have more unique value (however superficial or subjective) to bring than a typical gig worker brings to say, Uber, what else do you think defines gig work?
The term "gig" has evolved into something different than what it might have refered to a few years ago, before the phrase "gig worker" was used almost exclusively to refer to people who rely on various tech platforms to funnel them work on demand. More and more there is a socioeconomic connotation of relatively low pay as the most used platforms tend to be those with the lowest average hourly wages, but I suppose that's not a strict requirement.
