i3 - September/October 2020 - 26

Policy

By Jennifer Taylor

P O L I CY U P DAT E

Are Jobs as We Know
Them Coming to an End?
Interview with Jeff Wald, author of The
End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand
Workers and Agile Corporations

he coronavirus pandemic created swift and significant
disruption in the workforce. More than half of the
nation's workforce shifted to a fully remote work experiment in just a few weeks. Throughout history, we have witnessed
jobs evolve, especially in times of disruption such as the industrial revolution that introduced machines, electricity and computing to the workplace. The pandemic is the newest disruptor
and is accelerating the end of the 'in the office, one manager,
nine-to-five' job. I recently interviewed Jeff Wald, author of The
End of Jobs to discuss why jobs are changing so rapidly and how
technology is expediting the rise of on-demand workers.
employers and workers 'get out of whack'
again. It's important to understand how, in
the past, workers and companies have come
together and how society has come together
- to find a new footing and to give the stability necessary for all parties to move forward.

Q Millions of Americans work in a

Q What can history tell us about
jobs today?
The three industrial revolutions are mechanization, electrification and computerization.
Those are the three times when a set of technologies came along and massively changed
the balance of power between companies
and workers. That's the framework I share in
the book and ask readers to think about the
history of work as an undulating balance of
power between workers and companies.
Some call robotics and artificial intelligence
(AI) the fourth industrial revolution - I
call it the first services revolution. We are
going to see this balance of power between

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physical office. You predict that these
jobs are coming to an end. Why?
A When I talk about the end of jobs it is not
"robots that are taking our jobs." Full stop.
That is not happening in the near term. The
'one office, one manager nine-to-five' job,
that people knew in the '70s, '80s and '90s,
is ending. When we think about the 'one
office, one manager nine-to-five' job, it is
giving way slowly to 'the fluid, team-based,
always on, work from anywhere' job. The
idea that I no longer report to one person.
That may be how it looks on the org chart,
but I'm on teams. I'm working with the marketing department on this. I'm working with
the operations department on that. We have
teams working on various projects, and
much of your work is outside the scope of
what your general manager is in charge of.

Q What is a 'fluid team-based' job and
where do we see them in the workforce?
The notion of 'fluid' means people are
moving more fluidly from a full-time worker
to a part-time worker to a temp worker to a
freelancer. When you look at the on-demand
economy, you see the biggest contributors are moonlighters or people working
multiple jobs. Although importantly, from
a Bureau of Labor Statistics perspective,
fewer Americans work two jobs today than
they did 20 years ago. There's this notion
that everyone's got to work two jobs to make
ends meet, and I don't doubt that's true for
many people. But 5% of workers today work
two jobs while 20 years ago, it was 6% of
workers. So, you have to look at data and
statistics - not just an anecdote.

Q When I think about on-demand
workers, Uber, Lyft, and TaskRabbit
come to mind. Are there other types
of on-demand workers?
A It is interesting that the conversation
about on-demand workers is mostly driven
by one company, Uber. But Uber represents
.001% of the workers in the on-demand
I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

9/1/20 10:32 AM

https://www.amazon.com/End-Jobs-Demand-Workers-Corporations/dp/1642934356 https://www.amazon.com/End-Jobs-Demand-Workers-Corporations/dp/1642934356 https://www.amazon.com/End-Jobs-Demand-Workers-Corporations/dp/1642934356

i3 - September/October 2020

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