This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Philip Cross, May 6, 2025
For years, much labour market research has been based on the assumption that work is becoming increasingly precarious. Growing concern about the emergence of gig work is typical. In fact, most studies find gig work involves only a small share of employment, usually well below 10 per cent, while many gig workers are actually attracted by the flexibility and freedom it offers and, contrary to favoured narratives, aren’t being pushed into it by shrinking opportunities elsewhere in the labour market.
Most researchers assume gig work entails low pay, unstable employment, poor working conditions, fewer opportunities for advancement and limited protection from governments or unions.
Alex Himelfarb, former head of Canada’s federal public service, is a typical example. In Breaking Free of Neoliberalism, his 2024 book published by Formac Lorimer, he says gig work is “monetizing hardship” and contributes “to making work a competitive, insecure and miserable experience.” In this view, employers were emboldened by globalization and enabled by new technologies at a time of weakening protections for workers offered from government and unions.
Reality is quite different from this dystopian narrative. For most Canadian workers, the workplace has not become less secure and more hostile in recent years. Average job tenure continues to rise as more people stick with the same employer. Surveys reveal the vast majority of workers — especially the self-employed, which includes most gig workers — enjoy their work and are content with their pay and benefits (at least until inflation squeezed real incomes in 2022). This relatively benign assessment of the workplace is supported by the quit rate, which, at one per cent a year, is lower than before the pandemic.
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Philip Cross is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
