Independent work: choice, necessity, and the gig economy

Independent work
Other forms of work
Primary earning
Permanent         employment
Temporary work
Small businesses 
Supplemental
On-demand
Short-term rentals
Selling goods
Occasional
selling
of used goods 
Long-
term 
asset
rentals
Long-term
contracts or fixed
working schedules
Source: McKinsey Global Institute analysis
Primary earning
Permanent         employment
Temporary work
Small businesses 
Supplemental
On-demand
Short-term rentals
Selling goods
Occasional
selling
of used goods 
Long-
term 
asset
rentals
Long-term
contracts or fixed
working schedules
Antonia is a 
freelance editor 
Julie has a
two-month 
placement 
through a
temporary 
agency
Becca cleans 
houses for 
multiple clients
Michael is an 
Uber driver  
Deepa sells 
handmade 
pottery on Etsy  
Jacques rents 
his vacation 
home on Airbnb
Jan is a high 
school teacher 
who does  
private tutoring 
James is a 
therapist 
with his own 
practice 
Marisa
is an
interior 
designer
Francois is
an IT expert 
hired for 
three months 
by a large
corporation
Sanchi is a full-time 
employee who 
telecommutes 
Quinn works full-time 
for a cleaning service 
that has a contract 
with a hotel
Kelsey’s tech firm 
has contracted her 
out to a client
Rüdiger has a 
“minijob” as a 
dishwasher in a 
restaurant
Crosbie has a 36-month 
contract working a 
regular 40-hour week
Lisa has a tenant on a 
yearly lease
Susan sold 
her old skis 
on eBay
Jai is a
part-time
employee
Exhibit 1
Who fits into MGI’s definition of independent work? 

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23
McKinsey Global Institute
Independent work: Choice, necessity, and the gig economy
The future of independent work looks a lot like its past 
Western culture has long taken it for granted that most jobs require workers to be present in 
an office or on a worksite eight hours a day from Monday to Friday. But this framework—and 
indeed the entire concept of work being built around the employee-employer relationship—
is actually a relatively recent construct. 
As recently as 1900, the United States was still largely an agrarian economy, and nearly 
half of the US workforce was self-employed (Exhibit 2). The Second Industrial Revolution 
upended that way of working, ushering large numbers of people off the family farm, onto 
factory floors, and into the kind of traditional employer-employee relationships that look 
familiar today. By 1970, the share of unincorporated self-employed workers had declined to 
just 6 percent of the labor force, roughly in line with its level today (although this is only part 
of the broader universe of independent work). Similar trends unfolded in Europe, although 
data gaps make this retrospective harder to trace. In France, for example, self-employment 
declined from over one in three workers in the mid-1900s to around one in ten today.
15
 
15
  David Blanchflower, 
Flexibility@work 2015: Self-employment across countries in the Great Recession of 
2008–2014
, Dartmouth College and Randstad, May 2015. One major exception has been the United 
Kingdom, where self-employment rates doubled from only 7.5 percent in 1960 to 15 percent in 2015 
(although rates started at a much lower base than in other Western European countries).