Why freelancing is becoming the new norm

If you've been struggling to find full-time work, especially if you're young and don't have a ton of experience - it's probably because you're looking for full-time positions. Of which, especially to the "entry level" market, there is a scarce amount.

Those who aren't in the "entry-level" bracket often make the false assumption that when people complain about how rough the job market is for college grads, they're reacting to the same considerable obstacles that they had to deal with. In some cases, this might not be untrue.

They may also point out that unemployment is currently super low. It's sitting comfortably at 4.1%, a huge change from 2008, when the recession began and that number was sitting at a depressing (recessing? Sorry) 10%. Skeptics may cry "doomsaying" when addressing the complaints of younger professionals, especially (do I really have to say it?) millennials, but there is significant evidence that these complaints have merit - and there has been for years.

Let me hit you with this: according to this report by NBC in 2016, back when the unemployment rate was slightly higher at 4.6%, most of the jobs created since 2005 (falling within both Bush Jr. and Obama administrations) have been what are considered "nontraditional" jobs. These are defined as, basically, not 9-5, "traditional" jobs; these include part-time jobs, freelancing, contract workers, temps, and on-call employees. Or, to take a direct quote from the aforementioned NBC article:

"The bottom line is that the nature of work is changing," study co-author Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton professor of economics told NBC News. "The traditional 9-5 steady job still exists, but it's less common than it used to be."

In short, the economy is improving - unemployment is indeed going down. The trouble is that statistics can be misleading if you don't know how to read them. Or rather, read into them.

Let me explain: just because unemployment is going down, that doesn't mean underemployment is going down too. What do I mean by "underemployment?" I mean you have a job, but you don't have enough hours or wages etc. to pay the bills. You technically are employed, but you don't have the opportunity to make enough money from just the one job.

The old model is gone; nobody works at the same company for 40 years and then retires with full pension anymore. Well, some do, but not nearly as many as before. That isn't how the newly-created jobs, the ones that have been pulling some of us out of the recession, work.

We would like to go to one place, several times a week, do the thing we're familiar with, the thing we're good at, collect our money and go home. Most of us, anyway. Many of us are finding that we can't do that, because our job either doesn't allow us to work the standard 40 hours that traditionally has allowed one to live comfortably, or doesn't pay high enough wages that even 40 hours is enough to pay the bills, let alone feed a family.

We're all super pissed, and we should be. We were told to do things that required gargantuan amounts of investment in both time and money, and the assurances we got turned out not to be true. If they had, we wouldn't be dealing with this exact scenario that we're currently dealing with. 

A bachelor's degree is more expensive than ever, more important than ever, yet less a guarantee than ever that you will get a challenging, engaging, or meaningful job that pays enough. Or even that the job you do get will be any of those four.

The bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma.

Why did this happen? It's complicated. In the simplest terms I can muster, it's because the recession caused a lot of businesses to close or take huge hits, so much so that they had to let a lot of people go in order to preserve at least some of their employee's jobs.

The other problem is the rising cost of healthcare. It costs more than ever to pay for your employee's health insurance, because health insurance in general costs more than ever.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. The hours are still out there - unfortunately, we'll have to work harder than before to find them. Unlike our parent's generation, many of us can't rely on finding that one golden ticket to employment that we can ride until retirement. We have to actively seek out opportunities, change our lifestyles, gain a wider range of skills than ever - adapt or die.

The ideal is still working full-time with benefits, preferably Monday morning through Friday afternoon, when most people typically work. At least, most people tend to prefer that schedule. 

Some of us may be lucky enough to get full-time positions that pay well and give health insurance in exchange for hard work. For the rest of us - and that number is growing - we'll have to make those same wages a little more creatively. Fifteen hours of driving for Lyft here, twenty hours freelance graphic design there - a Thursday off, a Saturday morning doing administrative work for a tech startup - six months abroad on a boat - two weeks on-site in a different city in a different hemisphere in a different part of the world. Whatever it takes.

Of course, there's still the issue of healthcare. The ACA would enable this new model of employment far more viable, of course. If the Republican party weren't feverishly trying (and failing) to dismantle it to spite Obama.

Which is why all of us, every one of us, should be very, very mad at the government right now. Their "Game of Thrones" level of petty squabbles over power are causing someone you know, if not you, to be freaking out right now about how to pay for things that are essential for survival. Of course, if you have an emergency but don't have health insurance, you could always go into tens of thousands of dollars worth of de- oh, wait. Our entire generation did that, because our teachers, parents and government officials told us to before we were old enough to know better.

At least now, we have more opportunities than ever to be our own bosses before global warming or nuclear war eventually kill us all.