The Second Job You Don’t Know You Have
With the move to $15 or higher minimum wage, you can bet there will much more “shadow work” that will be moved to consumers or lost to automation. Shadow work is all the unpaid jobs we do on behalf of businesses and organizations: We are pumping our own gas, scanning our own groceries, booking our travel and busing our tables at Starbucks. Shadow work is a new concept, so as yet, no one has compiled economic data on how many jobs we, the consumers, have taken over from (erstwhile) employees. Yet it is surely a force shrinking the job market, and the unemployment it creates is structural.
This is not blaming our current POTUS. It is simply a natural progression of companies trying to reduce costs and increase productivity. As technology improves, it is even easier to allow consumers or robots do the work of the manual worker. If you don’t make your money with your mind but instead make it with back-breaking work or by “smiling” to the consumer, your job is severely at risk especially if you want to be paid more money simply because you can run a cash register and fetch a paper-wrapped sandwich from a food slot.
More reading: The Second Job You Don’t Know You Have – Craig Lambert – POLITICO Magazine