Side Hustle Safety Net: How Vulnerable Workers Survive Precarious Times

While the Covid-19 lockdowns gave some laid-off workers lavish unemployment benefits that changed their lives, others scrabbled for dead-end gigs, according to this revealing study from University of North Carolina sociologist Ravenelle (Hustle and Gig). Reporting on her survey of 199 workers, most of them New Yorkers, Ravenelle focuses on people who got by without unemployment assistance, including immigrant, part-time, and gig workers who were ineligible for benefits, as well as others who passed them up. Their safety net, Ravenelle observes, was to pile on bad jobs, including ubiquitous, grinding app gigs with Uber, Door Dash, and TaskRabbit, selling their pristine urine for faked drug tests, delivering illegal pot, or doing stints of prostitution (“The worst sex of my life,” according to one respondent). These routines left people stuck in a rut, stressed out, and chronically hard up for money. In contrast, those who received the unusually generous unemployment benefits of the CARES Act, which often paid more than their jobs had, were giddy at their luck—“It was about $8,000.... I definitely cried.... In my personal bank account, I had never seen that much money”—and used the windfall to start a pet-boarding business or give up bartending to retrain as a dental hygienist, among other projects. Ravenelle makes a cogent case for more comprehensive unemployment insurance, but her survey also shines as a lively, fascinating panorama of the neo-Dickensian labor regime so many workers endure. It’s worth a look. (Oct.)