Precarious work, precarious assets: gig-work in the asset welfare state

Many workers are no longer guaranteed a stable, ongoing source of income and instead must turn to a patchwork of short-term or low-paid self-employed work to make ends meet.  Alongside a rise in precarious work has been the transformation of the welfare state from a wage-earner’s welfare state to the asset-based welfare that is premised on securing access to and preserving the value of assets (i.e. property, retirement funds etc.).  In the asset-based welfare state, households are expected to facilitate their own security via their assets in the absence of previous state expenditures, such as unemployment, healthcare, or education.

Emerging out of these co-existing forces is a contradictory logic where household are expected to secure themselves a stream of income to service the debt obligation necessary for accumulating these assets, while the stability of this income is challenged by precarious working conditions.  This has ultimately led to rising inequality between households that have the income to service asset accumulation compared with households whose precarious jobs lead to challenges in securing access to assets and uncertainty in maintaining them.