Benefits: When the retail industry outranks the gig economy

WFFH: The highs and lows of being a new parent or caregiver in a gig world

Photo credit: Nappy Stock

(“Work Fluently From Home,” or WFFH, is a series within “Window Shopping” geared toward entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, gig workers and startups.)

For the Boomer Generation (and most of Generation X’s early years), losing any job meant the end of health insurance. But in a Millennial generation that has the opportunity to sign up for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), health insurance options are much cheaper to invest in than the mind-boggling rates of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). ACA doesn’t care whether you are terminated, involved in a layoff or voluntarily quit; the goal is just to keep you and your family insured.

And with the gig economy — specifically for tech-savvy workers — helping newly self-employed people make anywhere from $31.23 to $40.25 per hour, it’s very much possible to skip Corporate America altogether and just pay your own health expenses. Even non-tech savvy employees can make money from popular gig sites for everything from food delivery, ride-sharing, customer service, marketing and writing, and administrative work. And if you’re interested in the retail industry and crafty enough, you can ditch selling someone else’s clothes and artwork altogether and start your own Etsy business.

For gig workers who may be toying with the idea of going back into the traditional job industry, it’s not your imagination. Job opportunities are looking a little different these days.

But one of the major downsides of gig work is still losing other job benefits. Unless gig workers have found passive income to avoid negative balances in checking and savings accounts, there’s no beating employment benefits for a family emergency or new addition to the family. When gig workers don’t work, they don’t get paid. It’s the life of a temp worker or commission-based employee. And it doesn’t matter how long a gig worker has been with a company or client; you get paid based off of current job performance instead of an accumulated balance.