Independent work: choice, necessity, and the gig economy

BUT INDEPENDENCE POSES SOME CHALLENGES FOR WORKERS 
Despite the advantages and potential for personal satisfaction, the choice to pursue 
independent work is not as seamless as it could be—and it involves some real trade-offs. 
This makes it perhaps even more striking that free agents express higher satisfaction with 
their work lives than traditional workers. 
To date, much of the public discussion has tended to focus exclusively on either the thriving 
free agent segment or the struggling reluctant segment. But there are challenges common 
to independent workers of all types that need to be considered more holistically. While we 
did not conduct in-depth research into these areas, it is clear that these issues need further 
exploration and will be the focus of ongoing debate.
More broadly, these challenges need to be viewed in the wider context of how the world of 
work is changing for everyone. As digitization creates new ways of working, there is greater 
uncertainty for broad swaths of the workforce. Anxieties are further fueled by longer-term 
trends in labor markets that have produced high levels of unemployment and stagnant 
wages for large numbers of people.
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 Many of the issues discussed below are not new, nor 
are they necessarily unique to independent earners. Governments and other intermediaries 
and innovators have taken some preliminary steps to alleviate these issues, but there is still 
much more work to do.
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Building an Etsy economy: The new face of creative entrepreneurship
, Etsy, July 2015. 
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  For more on these issues, see 
Poorer than their parents? Flat or falling incomes in advanced economies
, 
McKinsey Global Institute, July 2016.

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McKinsey Global Institute
4. Making independent work a win for all stakeholders