How can you diversify your work & experience?
The last several years have seen some of the most major innovations and changes to the employment landscape as we know it. What was once a minimal aspect of part time employment has now cemented itself as a foundational method of both supplementing, and at times replacing entirely, traditional career paths and options. This opportunity developing industry is known as the “Gig Economy” and has done it’s fair share of adding to…
…the death of the full time employee.
Several different aspects apply to the ongoing trend of decline in full time employees on staff, both within the US and internationally. Let’s dive right in to several of these aspects, before unveiling some methods of diversifying your own work & experience.
Benefits & Health Insurance Costs
It’s no secret that both health insurance and various other accouterments of full time employees have continued to increase in cost for employers across the country. While remaining bi-partisan in political nature, one can see that the cost of maintaining benefits for full time employees has continued to rise significantly faster than associated wage increases across multiple industries of career paths.
In fact, according to Insurance Journal:
This year’s premium increases are comparable to the rise in workers’ wages (2.6%) and inflation (2.5%) during the same period. Over time, the increases continue to outpace wages and inflation. Since 2008, average family premiums have increased 55 percent, twice as fast as workers’ earnings (26%) and three times as fast as inflation (17%).
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/10/08/503575.htm
What we find is an economic landscape where the price of benefits continue to outpace the rise of both wage increases and inflation, in dizzying proportion.
Regardless of the desire to maintain full time employees, many times these benefits are simply not affordable for the average small and medium sized business. In the case of large-scale corporations, with the rise of on-demand labor and increased recruiter efforts, many times the same profit performance can be maintained with fewer full time employees and overhead.
Rise of “On-Demand” Labor
The last five years alone have revolutionized the labor market with not only the continued introduction of “On Demand” labor platform opportunities, but also the refinement of an ever increasing array of specialized, high-end, custom work options.
That’s not to say the veritable giants of the industry don’t still hold their value, they by all means do. Many people either in between jobs or looking for more flexibility and control in their work lives are creating a source of income through Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, GrubHub, TaskRabbit, Fiverr and the like.
While each of these platforms is tailored towards a more general aspect of work experience and skills necessary, there continues to be an expansion of platforms available. These platform opportunities continue to expand “On Demand” labor from simple tasks and projects, to more experienced, certified and higher expertise.
Some of these more premiere on demand labor services have expanded to the likes of services by doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers and other more traditionally educated and college degree certified professions. Many of these industry participants want to take advantage of a more flexible and rewarding daily schedule while maintaining more control over when and where they work.
Technological Replacement of Human Labor
While the internet may have spawned the entirety of the “gig economy”, technological advancements continue to outpace human labor productivity and overhead across nearly all available professional industries at large.
In fact, as stated in Forbes:
- One hundred years ago, the vast majority of people in the world worked on farms. The invention and proliferation of technology has made it possible so that a small minority of farmers (2% here in America) can provide food for all.
- A little over one hundred years ago, there were millions of jobs related to the main mode of local transportation of the day: the horse-drawn carriage. All of those jobs building carriages, manufacturing buggy whips, raising horses and scooping up their excrement off the city streets. Again, progress and technology have all but eliminated those jobs, and here we are.
- Seventy years ago, a little over 3% of the U.S. workforce was employed by the railroad industry moving freight and passengers around the country. Today, only 0.1% of the workforce is involved in the railroad industry, yet it moves nearly three times the amount of freight around the country.
- As described in the movie Hidden Figures, NASA used to employ human computers to calculate flight trajectories that helped get our spaceships into the sky. Today the aggregate computing power of human computing from that era is dwarfed by the device sitting in your pocket.
These are just some of the many jobs and tasks made obsolete within the last century alone. With each year technology compounds in advancement and efficiency, continuing to remove the need for an ever increasing amount of traditional jobs, tasks and operations.
Created within this vacuum of replacement is an increasing void of displaced employees in need of careers and work options. Rather than simply accept their experience and skills as obsolete, many people can find industries or tasks that overlap with their past, while working into “on demand” platforms and opportunities.
Latium: Your One-Stop Shop
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/10/08/503575.htm
While there are a multitude of “gig economy” platforms available, we’ve developed a freelancing opportunity that has continued to advance with the changes in technology and currency opportunities. Having used freelancing platforms for years ourselves, many of the inefficient and annoying aspects of platforms available were all too presently real to us as we set out developing the Latium platform.
Payment Options
Of the myriads of changes we’ve seen, very few even come close to the options that the advent of cryptocurrencies bring to the gig economy architecture. No longer are you forced to operate within a set payment structure, the introduction of cryptocurrency tokens allows for an even wider array of options to get paid, and pay for, various projects.
While currently Latium offers multiple cryptocurrencies for payment for various projects within the platform, USD has been released with increased crypto tokens support under development for release soon!
This means that no matter how you prefer to earn, and spend, your income, you can easily determine which employers are paying in specific currencies. Alternatively, as an employer, you have more flexibility and control over how you fund your project budgets and pay your successful freelancers who apply.
Wide Variety of Categories
No matter your job industry, skills or expertise, chances are you will find a project that fits your needs. With a wide range of categories to choose from, as the Latium community continues to grow, so does the myriads of projects and tasks available.
Introducing: Bidding
In the increasingly competitive landscape of the “On Demand” labor force, we’ve introduced the ability to bid on projects. No longer are you forced to only work for set pricing, bidding opens the door to more advanced and fine tuned project budgeting. As a freelancer, this means you can set your pricing and ensure your payment lines up with the effort provided.
As an employer, this likewise allows you to better feel out the competition and ensure the quality of work is also at a rate that doesn’t break the bank.
From Free Time to Skilled Expertise
One can easily see the opportunities available within the Latium platform range from simple “free time” projects such as surveys, referrals or social media engagement, to even more advanced project work including logo design, web development, programming and more.
No matter your current skills or expertise, Latium’s growing community has opportunities for you to earn, no matter your location, 24/7/365.
Thank you for your interest in the the Latium platform. As always you can follow us on Twitter for the latest news, updates and developments as we progress.
