New Legal & General study on U.S. gig economy workers: The gig economy is here to stay

• 69% of survey respondents see themselves working in the Gig Economy for the foreseeable future
• Fewer than 1 in 10 expressed a desire or plan to leave the Gig Economy in favor of more traditional salaried employment
• 62% of gig workers don’t like having to pay for their own health insurance

New York, NY, December 6, 2022 — A newly released study sponsored by Legal & General Group, U.S. Gig Economy, Part 1: The Gig Economy Is Here to Stay finds that with pandemic work shutdowns and a spiralling inflationary environment, the very nature of work in the U.S. and people’s relationship to it is evolving toward a more independent, flexible, and financially volatile model. More than a third of American workers consider themselves members of the gig economy, a proportion expected to rise. Today, the first volume of this broad new study introduces the research, zeroing in on the breadth, historical backdrop, and growing pains of this burgeoning work mode.

The first segment of the data-rich study, The Gig Economy Is Here to Stay, explores the effects of economic downturns on the specific demographic constituting the 36 percent of the U.S. population that make their living independently or on contract, unsalaried. The long-term consequences of this emerging model are still unfolding, but as of August/September 2022, most gig workers seemed satisfied working this way, with 69 percent saying they have no plans to return to the traditional workplace any time in the foreseeable future. 

Legal & General’s study looks not only at the benefits and primary reasons so many people are involved in the gig economy, but also at the drawbacks in social and financial security based on tenure and income, including lack of access to basic social needs. Some half-dozen future segments will look in depth at the massive income ranges and types of work encompassed by gig work; that gig work is a choice, and how this is expressed; the fierce independent-mindedness of gig workers; the extent to which gig workers meet their health and life insurance needs; similarly with their retirement needs; what it would take to get gig workers to go back to “the office”; and the pandemic fallout for gig workers.