Is Everyone Turning to Gig Work?

By Peter Lauria

July 31, 2025

Your neighbor works as a driver for a ride-sharing service a few nights a week. A friend of your wife’s, who has built a large audience on social media, has launched a career as a “momfluencer.” After getting laid off, a fellow dad at your kid’s school has decided not to return to the corporate world and instead will work for himself, as a contractor. 

Chances are, you know someone—or are yourself—engaged in some form of “gig work,” either as a main source of income or as a side hustle. What was once considered a temporary trend is now dominating the job market. Indeed, according to a new study, the gig workforce is growing three times as fast as the traditional one, with an estimated 400 million workers worldwide, including 80 million in the US. Within two years, gig work, led by Gen-Z talent, will represent half of the developed world’s workforce. What started out as a short-term solution to bridge the gap between jobs has become “a much stickier” career path, says Alexandrea Ravenelle, a gig-economy researcher and sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The longer people are in gig work, the more difficult it is for them to transition out,” she says.

Leaders have always embraced gig workers as part of their labor force—contractors, interim employees, freelancers, and others—because they are cheaper and don’t require benefits. They can also help fill skills gaps during times of technological innovation, like the AI-focused present. And while it dates back to the early part of the 20th century, gig work really took off with the digital revolution, which allowed people to work from anywhere and market themselves independently, instead of having to rely on others. In 1990, gig work comprised 10 percent of the labor market; now it’s three times as large.

There are as many explanations for the rise in gig work—that people can’t afford to live on a single income, that it’s impossible to find a staff position, and so forth—as there are jobs. Regardless, it’s become a major work-staffing issue that corporate leaders are only beginning to address at scale. Among their concerns: A disproportionate number of gig workers could create a void in the leadership pipeline, erode culture, slow down transformation, and potentially—because of the short-term nature of gig work—lower both engagement and productivity.

Indeed, Emilie Petrone, a vice chair in the Global Human Resources and CEO Succession practices at Korn Ferry, says firms need to make traditional corporate roles and career paths more attractive. Some are designing rotations that mimic gig-based work, in order to offer people exposure to different roles and areas across the company. Others are providing gig workers with portable benefits that follow them across gigs, longer contracts that offer progressively more responsibilities, and training and development programs to enhance skills and experience. As Petrone sees it, the narrative about younger generations embracing gig work because they’re disenchanted with traditional paths isn’t entirely true. Leaders can win over workers, she says, by “reframing the narrative around career development in a corporate framework.”

Photo credits: Elana Labs, Nadezhda Fedrunova/Getty Images