How Did Opportunities Changed for Women in the Workplace Apex

A shifting economic landscape is driving pregnant changes in the American workplace. Employment opportunities increasingly lie in jobs requiring higher-level social or analytical skills, or both. Physical or transmission skills, as much in demand every bit social or analytical skills some three decades ago, are fading in importance. Non coincidentally, employment is ascension faster in jobs calling for greater grooming, whether through education, experience or other forms of training.

These changes have played out surely and steadily in recent decades. A key factor is the decline in manufacturing employment, by near a third simply since 1990. Meanwhile, employment in knowledge-intensive and service-oriented sectors, such as education, wellness, and professional person and business services, has about doubled. Underlying factors such as globalization, outsourcing of jobs and technological modify are among the key forces contributing to the transformation.

Americans are taking notation of these trends. Respondents to the accompanying Pew Research Center survey written report that interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and proficient writing and communications skills are the most important skills for doing their jobs. And the share of adults ages 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education increased from 17% in 1980 to 33% in 2015. Most of these workers are engaged in jobs requiring higher-level social or analytical skills.

The changes at the workplace accept benefited some workers more than others. The earnings of workers in jobs requiring higher levels of social and analytical skills accept risen proportionately more the earnings of those in jobs requiring higher levels of physical skills. The growing inequity in earnings by skill type is besides reflected in the rising inequality in earnings betwixt workers with or without a college didactics.

The shifting need for skills may have worked to the do good of women, since they are more likely than men to be employed in occupations needing higher levels of social and analytical skills, whereas men are relatively more engaged in jobs calling for greater physical and manual skills. Because wages have risen faster in jobs requiring higher levels of social and analytical skills, this is likely to have contributed to the shrinking of the gender pay gap from 1980 to 2015.

In the midst of a changing workplace, the implicit contract between workers and employers appears to be loosening. The earnings of workers overall take lagged behind gains in labor productivity since the 1970s.¹⁰
Moreover, smaller shares of workers receive wellness or pension benefits in 2015 than they did in 1980. More recently, culling employment arrangements, such as contract piece of work, on-phone call piece of work and temporary help agencies, appear to be on the rise.

This chapter focuses on how work has inverse for American workers in recent decades. The cardinal consequence is the shift in employment opportunities, from jobs requiring concrete or manual skills to those requiring social or belittling skills. Related to this is the need for higher levels of didactics, experience and job training. At the same time, workers must adapt to changes in the broader economic climate. Thus, this section also reports on other key trends in the labor market relating to employment and earnings opportunities, provision of benefits, hours worked, job tenure and piece of work arrangements.

The importance of a given skill to a chore is ascertained from the latest ratings in the Section of Labor’south Occupational Information Network (O*Cyberspace), a comprehensive database whose ratings are based on surveys of workers combined with information received from task analysts. The ratings data from O*NET is matched to occupations listed in the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of approximately 55,000 households conducted jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPS data are and so used for the assay of employment and wage trends in occupations grouped by skill types (see the text box and Methodology for details). The CPS is also the source of the information for most of the remaining assay.

The changing need for job skills and preparation

The types of skills needed in the workplace and the level of training required to fulfill a chore may change over time for two reasons. One possibility is that occupations themselves transform in some style, perhaps calling for more estimator skills and preparation over time or using engineering science to substitute for manual demands. Another possibility is that employment may shift across occupations in response to larger economic and demographic changes. For example, globalization has led to a reduction in the need for manufacturing workers in the U.S., just the aging of the population has increased the need for doctors and nurses.

This chapter focuses on the changing demand for chore skills and preparation driven past the shift in employment across occupations from 1980 to 2015. Occupations are sorted by importance of a skill type and the level of preparation using the most updated skill ratings in O*Net, principally from within the by decade. These ratings practise non change over fourth dimension. However, employment changes over time and across occupations, driving the overall alter in skills and job preparation in the workplace.

The need for task grooming

More than workers today are in jobs where a higher level of grooming is needed. The number of workers in occupations requiring average to in a higher place-average instruction, training and experience increased from 49 meg in 1980 to 83 million in 2015, or past 68%. This was more than double the 31% increment in employment, from l to 65 million, in jobs requiring below-boilerplate instruction, training and experience.

As a result, roughly equally divided in 1980, the clear majority of workers in today’s workforce are in jobs calling for significant preparation. At a minimum, these jobs require an acquaintance degree or a similar level of vocational preparation, plus some prior job experience and one to two years of either formal or informal on-the-job training. (Examples of these occupations range from electricians to lawyers. Run into the text box for details.)

Within the group of occupations requiring an average to above-boilerplate level of preparation, the fastest growth in employment is in jobs that typically require at to the lowest degree a iv-year college degree and considerable to all-encompassing training and feel. Employment in these high-skill occupations, including accountants, teachers, surgeons and the similar, increased from 22 million in 1980 to 39 million in 2015, or by 80%.

The growing demand for higher-skilled jobs is associated with the overall improvement of the education level of the U.Southward. population. The share of adults 25 and older with a available’s degree or higher level of didactics has most doubled in the past 35 years, from 17% in 1980 to 33% in 2015.

The rise of social and analytical skills in the labor market

In addition to the level of preparation needed for jobs, the types of skills chosen for at work are changing. Employment in occupations needing higher levels of social or analytical skills increased significantly from 1980 to 2015, merely the demand for higher levels of physical skills has increased only slightly.

Employment in jobs requiring average or above-average levels of social skills, such as interpersonal, communications or management skills, increased 83% from 1980 to 2015. Meanwhile, employment in jobs requiring higher levels of analytical skills, such every bit critical thinking and computer use, increased 77%. Examples of jobs needing higher-level social or analytical skills include primary executives, civil engineers, postsecondary teachers and nurses.

In abrupt contrast, employment in jobs requiring higher levels of physical skills, machinery operation or tool manipulation, barely budged, increasing only 18%. Jobs calling for college levels of concrete skills include carpenters, welders, and the like. By comparing, overall employment in the economic system increased 50% from 1980 to 2015.

In terms of numbers, 90 million workers of a total of 148 meg were engaged in jobs requiring higher levels of social skills in 2015. At the aforementioned time, 86 million workers were in jobs needing average to to a higher place-boilerplate analytical skills in 2015. Employment in jobs requiring college levels of physical skills added upwards to 57 million.

As noted in more detail in the accompanying text box, there is an overlap in these counts of workers because many jobs call for higher levels of more than one type of skill. For example, managerial or teaching jobs require higher levels of both social and belittling skills. This group of jobs – needing college levels of both of these skills – is boosting employment by the most in the labor market. More specifically, employment in this select group of jobs increased from 39 million in 1980 to 76 meg in 2015, an increment of 94%.

While at that place is considerable overlap betwixt social and analytical skills, the need for physical skills in combination with social or analytical skills is limited. Most jobs that require college levels of physical skills, such as carpenters; laundry and dry out-cleaning workers; and welding, soldering and brazing workers, practise not call for college levels of social and belittling skills. In 2015, there were 38 million workers employed in jobs requiring only higher levels of concrete skills. This number was up merely 12% from 1980, when information technology stood at 34 million.

Employment in jobs requiring higher levels of social or analytical skills is full-bodied in more than rapidly growing sectors of the economy

Although each sector in the economic system creates a various assortment of jobs, some occupations are more likely than others to be plant in certain sectors. For case, doctors and nurses are principally in the wellness care and social assistance sector, while teachers are full-bodied in the educational services sector. Similarly, many production workers, such equally machinists or tool and die makers, are in manufacturing. For this reason, changes in the economic fortunes of private sectors are likely to have an influence on the changing needs for skills in the labor market.

In the past quarter century, there was a sharp difference in employment growth across industries. From 1990 to 2015, employment doubled in educational services and in wellness care and social assistance, increasing 105% and 99%, respectively. Employment growth was virtually as strong in professional and business services (81%).

Overall, these iii apace growing sectors combined to hire twenty million more workers from 1990 to 2015, more than than one-half of the total increase of 32 million. More importantly, in 2015, 45% of workers in jobs where social skills are in use at a college level were employed in these three sectors, as were 44% of workers in occupations requiring higher analytical skills. Thus, the growing importance of social or analytical skills may be linked to the expansion in education, health, and professional person and business services.

At the same time, the diminishing importance of concrete skills in the economy is partly tied to the turn down of employment in manufacturing. In 2015, 16% of workers in jobs calling for higher levels of physical skills were in the manufacturing sector, compared with 10% of workers overall. But the manufacturing sector shed most one-third of its workforce from 1990 to 2015. Meanwhile, jobs requiring college levels of concrete skills are underrepresented in educational services, health care and social assist, and professional and concern services.^xi

Wages are increasing faster in jobs that require higher levels of social or belittling skills and higher levels of training

Jobs requiring college levels of social or analytical skills generally pay more than jobs requiring higher physical skills. From 1990 to 2015, the average earnings in jobs more than reliant on social or analytical skills have also increased more than the average earnings in jobs requiring more than intensive concrete skills. As a event, the earnings gap between jobs requiring higher levels of social or belittling skills on the one hand and physical skills on the other has widened over this period.

In 1990, the average hourly wage of workers in jobs requiring higher belittling skills was $23. This was followed closely past workers in social skill-intensive jobs, who earned $22 per hour. Lagging well behind were workers in physically intensive jobs, who earned $16 per hour, 72% as much every bit workers in higher analytical skill jobs. (All wages expressed in 2015 dollars.)

From 1990 to 2015, the boilerplate hourly wage in jobs requiring higher analytical skills increased the most, rising 19% to $27.¹²
The average hourly wage in higher social skill jobs increased 15%, to $26. However, wages for workers in higher physical skill jobs were nearly stagnant, increasing only seven% to $eighteen per hour. Consequently, workers in physically intensive jobs earned merely 65% as much as workers in college analytical skill jobs in 2015.

Women may accept benefited more men from the irresolute demand for skills

Women are more than likely than men to exist employed in occupations where social or analytical skills are relatively more of import. In low-cal of the wage trends described above, this may have helped narrow the gender wage gap in recent decades.

Overall, women fabricated up 47% of the workforce in 2015. But they were the majority of workers in occupations requiring boilerplate or above-average levels of social skills (55%) and workers in jobs requiring college analytical skills (52%). By contrast, women’due south employment share in occupations requiring college levels of physical skills was significantly lower (30%).

Considering of the relatively higher wage associated with jobs requiring higher social or analytical skills, women’s overrepresentation in these jobs may have helped narrow the gender wage gap. Every bit shown in a later section in this report, the median almanac earnings of total-time, year-round working women increased from $30,402 in 1980 to $xl,000 in 2015, a gain of 32%. However, total-time, year-round working men experienced a iii% loss in earnings as their median annual earnings fell from $51,684 in 1980 to $50,000 in 2015. As a result, the wage gap between women and men narrowed from about 60 cents on the dollar in 1980 to 80 cents on the dollar in 2015. (Annual earnings expressed in 2014 dollars.)

A higher level of education is related to the use of social and analytical skills and other forms of job preparation

There is a strong link between workers’ level of education and the odds of their working in jobs that require higher levels of social or analytical skills. Moreover, workers with higher levels of instruction are more than probable to acquire other types of job trainings, acquiring certificates or licenses along the way.

In 2015, among employed workers overall, more than one-third (36%) had completed at least a four-year higher degree program. But college-educated workers accounted for about half of employment in occupations requiring higher social skills (51%) or college belittling skills (53%). Meanwhile, only 14% of workers in jobs requiring higher physical skills were college educated. The didactics level of a majority of workers in concrete-skill jobs was loftier school or less.

The relationship betwixt higher education and skills suggests that the need for college-educated workers may continue to grow in the future. At the same time, new government data reveal that workers with higher levels of education also take higher levels of job preparation in the class of chore-related certificates or licenses.

In 2015, one-in-four workers (25%) in the U.South. had a job-related certificate or license, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The share was highest amidst the most educated. More than than half (52%) of workers with a postgraduate degree had a job certificate or license.¹³
Similarly, workers with a bachelor’s caste alone (30%) and workers with an acquaintance degree (36%) were more probable than average to have a chore-related certificate or license.

In that location is besides a gender gap in the conquering of certificates and licenses, simply in favor of women. In 2015, women (28%) were more probable than men (23%) to have certificates or licenses. Withal, there is virtually no divergence by age in the likelihood of having a chore certificate or license among workers 25 and older.

The relationship among education, gender and job training may be the effect of which industries and occupations require certificates and licenses. Indeed, industries and occupations vary profoundly on this account. Most half the workers (47%) in instruction and health services have a certificate or license. Just only nigh x% of workers in retail merchandise, data, and leisure and hospitality accept a document or license. By occupation, certification or license rates are highest in health care occupations (77%), legal occupations (68%) and education occupations (56%).

More educated workers and women fared better than others, just employment and earnings prospects overall are little improved

Acquiring new skills and seeking college levels of job preparation are not the only challenges facing workers today. Two recessions this century, in 2001 and the Great Recession of 2007-09, take set back the employment and earnings potential of many workers by years. Meanwhile, employers accept also cut dorsum on the provision of health and pension benefits. Traditional employment arrangements, while notwithstanding the norm, are showing signs of waning. Culling work arrangements in the grade of contract piece of work, on-call work and temporary help agencies appear to be on the rise. But in the midst of this, women have raised their engagement with the labor market and the gender wage gap has narrowed in recent decades.

Trends in employment

The employment rate in the U.S. – the share of the population 16 and older that is employed – has been relatively steady since 1980. It peaked nearly recently at 64% in 2000 but returned to its 1980 level (59%) by 2015. The refuse in the employment rate since 2000 is linked in office to the aging of the workforce equally older workers are less likely to remain in the labor strength. Another important factor is the Great Recession (2007-09), which resulted in a precipitous contraction in the employment charge per unit, from 63% in 2007 to 58% in 2011.

Even though the overall employment rate is currently the same as in 1980, there are some sharp differences beyond historic period groups. Younger workers are much less likely to exist working today than they were in 1980, and older workers are laboring on more than. Virtually of this turnaround has happened this century.

Among 16- to 24-yr-olds, less than half (46%) were employed in 2015, compared with 57% in 2000. This trend is driven partly by the fact that a larger share of immature adults are enrolled in college, which delays their entry into the workforce. Amidst 18- to 24-year-olds, twoscore% were enrolled in college in 2014, compared with 26% in 1980.

At the other cease of the age spectrum, older adults are staying in the workforce longer than they used to and their employment rate is climbing as a consequence. The share of adults 65 and older who are employed has risen steadily in recent decades, climbing from 12% in 1980 to xix% in 2015. The increase was uninterrupted past the Great Recession. The employment rate for adults ages 55 to 64 has also risen since 1980, but its level in 2015 (62%) was less than its pinnacle in 2008 (63%).¹⁴

Women, as well, have profoundly increased their presence in the workforce in the by several decades. Some 48% of women sixteen and older were employed in 1980, and this share increased to 58% by 2000. During the same menstruum, the employment rate for men held steady at well-nigh 70%. Since 2000, the employment charge per unit has fallen for both men and women, although men have experienced a slightly steeper reject. For men, the employment rate cruel from 71% in 2000 to 65% in 2015, or 6 percentage points. During the same menstruation, the employment rate for women decreased from 58% to 54%, a drop of four per centum points.

Earnings of total-fourth dimension, year-round workers are fairly flat since 1980
^xv

American workers overall have not received much of a pay raise from 1980 to 2015. But at that place is a precipitous difference in the outcomes for men and women during this time – the earnings of men have fallen, and the earnings of women take risen. Workers with a 4-yr college caste and older workers have also fared amend than others.

After adjusting for inflation, the median earnings for all total-time, year-round workers increased merely six% from 1980 to 2015, from $42,563 to $45,000 (in 2014 dollars).¹⁶
Women, however, experienced a 32% gain in median earnings from 1980 to 2015. In sharp contrast, men experienced a 3% loss in earnings. As a effect, the wage gap between women and men has narrowed from about 60 cents on the dollar in 1980 to 80 cents on the dollar in 2015.

Along education lines, workers with a 4-year college or higher level of education are the merely grouping to experience a gain in median earnings since 1980. The median earning of a college-educated worker increased 11% from 1980 to 2015 ($57,764 to $64,000). Meanwhile, the median earnings of workers with lesser education decreased, with the greatest loss experienced past workers who did not complete high school. The median for these workers fell from $33,442 in 1980 to $25,000 in 2015, a loss of 25%.

Younger workers are earning significantly less than they did in 1980, but the earnings of older workers take risen. Amid full-time, year-round workers, the median earnings of 16- to 24-year-olds decreased from $28,131 in 1980 to $25,000 in 2015, a drop of 11%. Meanwhile, the median earnings of workers 65 and older rose 37%, from $36,483 in 1980 to $50,000 in 2015. Workers ages 55 to 64 earned 10% more in 2015 than they did in 1980. The median earnings of workers ages 25 to 54 have remained flat at around $45,000. Full-time, year-circular workers ages 65 and older used to earn less than their prime-age peers (ages 25 to 54), simply now their earnings match those of workers ages 55 to 64 and they are amid the ranks of the nation’s highest paid workers.

A smaller share of workers are covered by employer-provided benefits
¹⁷

Equally earnings overall barely inched upwardly, employee benefits – judged by the share of workers covered by employer-sponsored health insurance or retirement plans – have eroded since 1980. Simply older workers, 55 and older, and, to some extent, workers with a four-year higher caste or higher level of education have bucked this trend. But even as the coverage of workers has slipped, benefit costs have assumed a larger share of employee compensation due, in part, to the rising cost of health insurance plans.

Wellness insurance benefits

Every bit of 2013, employer-sponsored health insurance plans embrace a smaller share of workers than they did in 1980. Near workers get health insurance coverage either through their own employer or the employer of a family member, such equally a spouse or parent. The share of workers with any employer-sponsored health insurance plan (either through their ain employers or through the employer of a family unit member) brutal from 77% in 1980 to 69% in 2013. The share of workers covered past a health insurance plan through their own employer dropped from 62% in 1980 to 51% in 2013.

Amidst demographic groups, participation in an employer-sponsored health program diminished similarly among men and women, from 77% for both in 1980 to 68% for men in 2013 and 70% for women.

The youngest workers (ages xvi to 24) experienced the sharpest turn down in employer-sponsored health insurance coverage. Seven-in-x young workers in 1980 had health insurance either though their own employer or through the employer of a family fellow member, but only half of today’s immature workers do. The coverage for workers ages 25 to 54 dropped from 82% to 71%. However, older workers, especially those ages 65 and older, are much more than likely to get insurance through an employer than they were several decades ago. The share of workers ages 65 and older with employer-sponsored health insurance increased from 31% to 51%.

Across education groups, workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher level of instruction are the but group that did non experience much of a turn down in wellness insurance coverage received through employers. Coverage fell amidst all other education groups. The sharpest drop was amongst workers with less than a high school education, equally the share of these workers with an employer-sponsored wellness program fell from 66% in 1980 to 37% in 2013.

Retirement benefits

In contrast to the long-run decline in health insurance benefits, the decrease in retirement benefits is of more recent origin. The share of workers with admission to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, whether a traditional alimony or a 401(k)-type plan, peaked most recently at 57% in 2001, upwards from 50% in 1980.¹⁸
However, the share fell to 45% by 2015.

Changes in retirement programme admission also vary across demographic groups, with older workers and women faring better than other groups. In 1980, only 25% of workers 65 and older had access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, just the share increased to twoscore% in 2015. Overall, retirement benefits are most commonly available to workers in their prime working years. In 2015, the share of workers in a retirement plan or with access to one ranged from 51% among 55- to 64-year-olds to 30% among 16- to 24-year-olds.

The share of employed men with access to a retirement program decreased from 53% in 1980 to 44% in 2015. At the same time, the share among employed women edged up from 45% to 46%. Thus, women now are more likely than men to have access to a retirement program.¹⁹

Although a smaller share of workers today are covered in employer-sponsored health or retirement plans, the employers’ cost of providing these benefits has risen over time. This is reflected in the share of benefits in a worker’south full compensation. The average hourly compensation of employees in June 2016 was $34.05, according to the U.Due south. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of this, $23.35, or 69%, went to wages and $10.seventy, or 31%, went to benefits. A quarter century earlier, in 1991, 72% of compensation went to wages and 28% to benefits. The increase in do good costs derives principally from an increment in insurance benefits (including wellness insurance). The insurance share in employee bounty is up from vii% in 1991 to 9% in 2016. In that location is as well an increment in the share of retirement benefits, from iv% to 5%.

Workers today stay longer with their employer

Task tenure, measured past how long workers take been with their electric current employer, has increased in the past three decades. Most of this increase occurred since 2000. In office, this is due to the rising share of older workers in the labor force. These workers tend to have a much longer tenure with their employer. But the economic downturns this century, such as the Great Recession, may also have been a factor, making information technology harder for workers to switch jobs.

The median job tenure for all workers was 4.6 years in 2014, up from iii.5 years in 1983. The increment was greater among women (from 3.1 years in 1983 to iv.5 years in 2014) than among men (from 4.1 years to 4.vii years over the same period). Thus, working women now stay with their employer almost equally long every bit their male counterparts exercise.

Looked at some other fashion, almost half of workers (51%) had worked for their current employer 5 years or longer in 2014, compared with 46% of workers in 1996. Meanwhile, the share of workers who stay with their current employer for one year or less dropped from 26% to 21%.

Older workers tend to accept been with their current employer longer than younger workers. In 2012, workers 55 and older had a median tenure greater than ten years, compared with near 3 years for 25 to 34-year-old workers. The job tenure of specific historic period groups has non changed much since 1996, with the exception of older workers. The share of workers 65 and older who were with the same employer for 5 years or more went up from 67% in 1996 to 76% in 2014, and the share among workers ages 55 to 64 increased from 71% to 75%.

Workers with higher educational activity do non accept more job tenure than their lesser-educated counterparts. Among workers 25 and older, those with at to the lowest degree a bachelor’south degree had a median job tenure of v.6 years in 2014, compared with 5.8 years for those with only a high schoolhouse diploma. Workers with less than a high school teaching have the shortest tenure among all educational activity groups (4.4 years in 2014), and their median tenure has been flat since 1996.

Americans are working more overall
^twenty

Americans may non be employed in greater shares and their earnings may have risen only modestly, but they are putting in more time at work today than they did in 1980. Most notably, workers are putting in an average of nearly four more weeks of work annually, with the boilerplate climbing from 43 weeks in 1980 to 46.8 weeks in 2015 (weeks at work include paid vacation and sick get out). The average length of a typical workweek is also upward, increasing to 38.7 hours in 2015 from 38.1 hours in 1980.²¹
Overall, this adds up to an additional one month’s worth of work.

This change is largely driven by the increasing hours and weeks that women devote to the labor marketplace. With respect to hours at work, the average amount of time per week by employed women increased from 34.1 hours in 1980 to 36.2 hours in 2015, while the average for men was unchanged at about 41 hours.

Employed women also significantly increased the weeks they worked on a yearly basis. The average number of weeks worked by working women was 46.2 in 2015, compared with 40.2 in 1980. Weeks worked increased by less amidst employed men, rise from 45.2 in 1980 to 47.4 in 2015. As a consequence, employed women now work almost as many weeks annually on average as men.

Another factor contributing to the growing trend is the sharp increase of piece of work hours among workers 65 and older. The boilerplate for workers in this age group increased from 29.3 hours per week in 1980 to 33.7 in 2015. Over the same catamenia, workers 65 and older besides raised the annual number of weeks worked from 38.iii to 44.vi.

Alternative employment arrangements may exist on the rise, merely fewer workers are self-employed or working multiple jobs

The emergence of services sourced through Uber, Mechanical Turk, Airbnb and other online platforms has given rise to debates about whether the workers providing those services are employees or contractors and whether they receive the basic workplace protections and benefits as under conventional piece of work arrangements. Similar concerns surround companies’ use of contract or temporary workers in lieu of calculation workers directly to their payrolls. Although there is bear witness that alternative work arrangements are becoming more prevalent, principally driven by the rise of contract work and independent contractors, the emergence of a sizable online economy where many workers rely on employment and compensation from “gigs” seems to exist some altitude away.

“Alternative employment arrangements” refers to the hiring of workers who are independent contractors or sourced through contract firms, on-call workers, or temporary-help agency workers. The Agency of Labor Statistics first estimated the share of these workers in overall employment in 1995. At that fourth dimension 10.0% of employed workers were in alternative employment arrangements. This share held steady in the following decade, edging up to 10.7% in 2005. More than recently, independent researchers who replicated the authorities’due south survey found that the share of workers in culling work arrangements had risen to 15.8% in 2015. Thus, nigh 24 1000000 workers currently work in these arrangements.

The majority of workers with alternative employment arrangements are independent contractors, and their share of the workforce rose from six.three% in 1995 to 8.4% in 2015. The share of contract workers – those hired by a contract visitor and sent to the customer’s worksite – jumped from 1.3% in 1995 to 3.1% in 2015. They are now the 2d-largest group of workers with alternative work arrangements.

The online, or gig, economy appears yet to be in its infancy, at least every bit measured by its engagement of workers. According to Katz and Krueger (2016), just 0.v% of all workers provided services through online intermediaries such as Uber in 2015. Some other gauge from JPMorgan Hunt Institute finds that 1% of adults earned income from work provided through online platforms in any given calendar month from 2012 to 2015.

The emergence of the gig worker likewise fails to materialize in other labor market indicators. The share of workers who moonlight by working more than than ane job is on the mode downwards, falling from more than six% in the mid-1990s to 5% in 2015. Almost all of this decrease had transpired past 2000, perhaps driven by the economic boom in the 1990s, which may have reduced the demand to moonlight. But the rate has shown no signs of inching up in contempo years.

An increment in self-employment is some other potential indicator of engagement in the gig economy. But the self-employment rate is as well on the pass up, falling from 11.2% in 1980 to 10.0% in 2015. The subtract is entirely due to the falling share of cocky-employed workers who have non incorporated their businesses, those more likely to be out on their own.²²