零工经济之父改口：这种工作趋势根本未出现

原本说起来，零工经济应该成为人类未来的工作方式。每一代人都希望享受工作自由，短期合同制工作就是实现的新方式。

至少过去专家是这样说的。而据《华尔街日报》报道，两位当代最知名的经济学家现在表示，2015年发布的研究观点是错的。普林斯顿大学教授艾伦·克鲁格和哈佛大学教授劳伦斯·卡茨之所以改变看法，是因为数据不全面，而且没有考虑经济衰退的影响。

2015年克鲁格和卡茨在论文中指出，工作的性质在改变。借助Uber和TaskRabbit等智能手机平台应用，人们可以通过零工谋生。

但随着时间推移，两位经济学家预期的趋势变化并未出现。美国劳工统计局发现，2005年到2017年工作领域几乎没有变化。2017年，从事“非传统工作”的劳动者约占劳动力总人口的10%。《纽约时报》指出，这一比例低于2015年的11%。

不仅如此，拥有固定职业的人还增加了。保守派智库美国企业研究所的经济政策研究主管迈克尔·R·斯崔恩向《纽约时报》表示：“我认为，大家言过其实了。”

的确如此。在克鲁格和卡茨看来，零工经济蓬勃发展的原因是人们靠打临时工维持生计。然而政府在追踪身兼多职就业者相关数据方面做得很差，导致情况更难判断。

“我和劳伦斯·卡茨现在的结论是，过去十年，非传统工作的劳动者占比增长微弱，可能（增速）只有一两个百分点，没有达到我们最初估计的五个百分点。”克鲁格对《华尔街日报》表示。（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审校：夏林

The gig economy was supposed to be the future of work. All generations wanted the freedom and short-term contract work was the new norm.

At least, that’s what the experts had said. But two of the most well-known economists—Alan Krueger of Princeton University and Lawrence Katz of Harvard—now say their influential 2015 study was wrong, as the Wall Street Journal reported. What threw them off was inadequate data and the recession.

Back then, Kreuger and Katz asserted that the nature of work was changing. People were creating a living out of odd jobs through smartphone platform apps such as Uber and TaskRabbit.

But over time, the expected changes didn’t come. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that between 2005 and 2017, virtually nothing had changed in the world of work. People in “alternative work arrangements” made up about 10% of the total workforce. As the New York Times pointed out, that was down from 11% in 2005.

Even more people held regular jobs. At the time, Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute told the Times, “I think everybody’s narrative got blown up.”

Indeed. According to the two academics, the gig economy seemed to explode as people were taking part-time work to make ends meet. Compounding that factor was the poor way the government tracks people with multiple jobs.

“Larry Katz and I now conclude that there was a modest rise in the share of the workforce in nontraditional jobs over the last decade—probably on the order of one to two percentage points, instead of the five percentage point rise we originally reported,” Kreuger told the Journal.