Digitalization has changed the world already and many more changes are expected in the nearest future.

Despite being hard to perceive from the very beginning, it has already brought many beneficial things to almost all people on Earth, or at least to those who are connected to the internet and can spectate this fascinating performance of changing the world. Economy has also been affected by these changes and since people still remain the main work force of any economy in any region of the world, digitalization has affected the process of work itself. Very gradually the world is moving to the so-called “gig economy” that is defined as an economy that does not presuppose the presence of regular and all-used-to employer-employee relationships. Gig economy presupposes that any worker who has a job or a work to do should become and independent contractor or simply become a freelancer that has a short-term job to do, but is not entirely tied to the specific workplace and/or company. It means that digitalization has brought freedom to work and having a job no longer means being a “slave” of your employer. However, the most important question is the following: so is gig economy better than regular or traditional economy?

As it has been said, the world has changed. When several decades ago people were looking for stability in their day-to-day activities, now this magic word “stability” might not be understood at all since how can you have anything stable in a world that is constantly changing? As a result, we run into a problem that stability is no longer a value for modern youth since they prefer challenges instead of stability. Do they prefer stress instead? Most probably no, because challenge in modern interpretation is much closer to self-development rather than to stress. It all means that being an independent contractor or a freelancer is a challenge because if you are being such, only you are responsible for your personal workload and for the presence of a job to do. It means that people now have much more freedom in terms of what to do, when to do and how to do. If you are flexible enough, this freedom is certainly a benefit. It is hard not to touch the so-called “generation gap” when people who have been searching for stability are really afraid of its absence, but young people perceive instability as a challenge to develop themselves. It all leads to the conclusion that gig economy is for young people. But it is relevant for now, and later on it will become relevant for more and more people despite of their age and occupation. So, being free should surely be perceived as a benefit.

Several decades ago people were afraid of losing the job and they did not consider constant education to be necessary referring to the statement that “why do I need to learn more if I’ve already learned what is important for me”. Its been working for quite a while but right now this is a philosophy that would hardly lead you anywhere: today people have to learn constantly. It concerns every sphere of their life starting from regular home activities and ending up with professional activities. Gig economy forces people to learn and to acquire more. Good thing about being a part of the gig economy is the presence of a possibility to develop in your own preferred direction rather than changing the area of interest completely. Multidisciplinary approach is one of the main descriptions of gig economy and while developing a back end code, you might also learn e-commerce since the task you are working on requires you to do that. Constant education and constant learning may also be viewed as a beneficial aspect of gig economy.

Even though we have not covered an entire scope of benefits and drawbacks of gig economy, we have focused on its best part. It surely has a number of drawbacks but we believe it is not necessary to focus on them because implementation of the gig economy is inevitable. It means that no matter what you do, you will have to face this significant economic change and it is better to be ready to win this game of change rather than to lose it and keep reminiscing about the good times of the past. Gig economy is good, not as good as it could have been, but we all are going to end up on the other side and that is why we truly believe that gig economy is our future.