What does it really mean to be your own boss? For all the hype around entrepreneurship and side hustles, the reality of independent work often looks less like freedom and more like risk shifted onto the individual. In this episode, we’re joined by Benjamin Waterhouse, a historian of modern economic life and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to demystify the gig economy and trace it back to its roots.
He argues that the gig economy is not a modern invention but the result of a decades-long \"fracturing\" of the workplace. Since the 1980s, corporations have steadily outsourced responsibility for wages, benefits, scheduling, and the social safety net, first through temp agencies and consulting contracts, and now through app-based platforms and vertically disintegrated supply chains. We explore what self-employment statistics actually reveal about underemployment, why younger workers are both drawn to and pushed into independent work, and how AI might be affecting stable entry-level jobs.
Thanks to Benjamin Waterhouse for joining us.
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