The country was glad to wave goodbye to lockdown life, but some of the habits it taught us remain. One is getting things – dinner, groceries, parcels – delivered to our homes, often in minutes, by tapping an app. That means more work for the people who make those deliveries – often self-employed contractors doing tasks arranged via “platform” companies such as Deliveroo or Uber.
This gig economy is a big deal, and getting bigger. More than four million people now earn at least some of their income from platform work, and the number is rising.
Some in politics and the media would tell you that the rise of platform working shows that a soulless capitalist system is stealing economic power and even free will from workers, leaving them with no choice but to eke out a miserable existence delivering pizzas. That’s a touching story, but there’s one problem with it: it’s not true. Gig-economy workers are as happy as others in the workforce. Far from being forced into platform work, they actively choose it.
I know this because the Social Market Foundation asked them. We…
