twenty-first century employment structures

My most recent stream of research deals with the structure of employment in the contemporary labor markets, especially around alternative work arrangements and the “gig economy.” I have worked in the past on the issue of the increasing contingent nature of the relationship between employers and their workforce. I am currently expanding that work, exploring the nature of work relationships, entrepreneurship and freelance work that is by choice and by necessity, and other forms of contingent work. My Wilson Center Fellowship will fund an extensive survey of platform and freelance workers in the U.S. Current works in progress include papers on the effect of COVID-19 on gig workers and the role of platform cooperativism in reducing economic precarity and improving working conditions.

recent working papers and conference presentations

• “Gigging in a Post-Pandemic World: Making Sense of Pandemic-Era Surveys of Gig Workers.” Presented for the Helene and Grant Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, New York, NY, May 11, 2022.
• “Gigging in a Post-Pandemic World: Lessons on the Future of Work from a Late-Pandemic Survey of Gig Workers.” Presented at the 43^rd Annual Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Conference, Austin, TX, March 27, 2022 (rescheduled from November 11-13, 2021).
• “Empowering Entrepreneurship: Platform Cooperatives as Pathways from Gig Jobs to Good Jobs.” December, 2021. An argumentative essay developed as part of the Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship.
• “COVID-19 and the Gig Economy: What Have We Learned [so far], and What Can We Do to Fix It?,” with Colby King. Prepared for Uneven Outcomes in the Labor Market: Understanding Trends and Identifying Solutions, February 1-4, 2021, hosted by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, and Philadelphia.
• “Making the Gig Economy Work for Everyone: Strategies to Reduce Precarity for Contingent Workers” Presented at the 2018 Urban Affairs Association Conference, Toronto, ON, Canada, April 4-7, 2018. [PowerPoint presentation]
• “COVID-19 and the gig economy: Preliminary results from a mid-crisis survey.” Presented at the 2020 Northeast Conference on Public Administration, Boston, MA, November 6-7, 2020 [presentation]

published articles

• With Cathy Yang Liu (2012). “Counting and Understanding the Contingent Workforce: Using Georgia as an Example.” Urban Studies, 49(5), 1003–1025.

Follow me on Academia.edu or ResearchGate

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3182-2395