#81: Office Workers Cut In Half? California's AB-5 and Biden's PRO Act Increasing Inflation And Extending Recession.
Inflation's going nowhere. Office workers will be hurt most. And guess what's in the way of a solution...AB-5, the union funded independent contractor killing bill.
Leaders,
Updates to the newsletter:
Trying to release biweekly.
Why? Because that’s the leadership cadence we use for ourselves and our clients.
For clients, we ship biweekly updates every week (our template).
For our own teams, we hold weekly sprint meetings with the working team and bi-weekly leadership reviews.
Sticking to the freelance economy, with the lens of what you need to know related to the freelance economy.
Why? That’s what we’re best at, where we spend our time, and where we have visibility to tactical insights.
There’s plenty of great resources like the All In Pod, Bloomberg Business Week, WSJ What’s News, Morning Brew that we use as our starting point.
Need To Know Updates:
🇳🇱 Netherlands made remote work a right (somewhere Glen Hodgson is raising a glass!).
💩 Recession, specifically the inflation driving it, shows no sign of slowing down.
Fed’s focus is inflation not becoming ‘normal’, meaning they’ll keep raising rates with to drop inflation even if that means recession.
Supply chains will only get worse as California’s AB-5 law forces truckers off the road.
According to the Bloomberg article California Throws 70,000 Truckers in Gig-Work Legal Limbo, Risking Supply Chains.
“Two-thirds of state’s port truckers could be forced off road”.
Why? Because “70% of truckers serving some of the country’s largest ports are owner-operators, and AB5 will govern their relationships with carriers, brokers and shippers”.
Inevitably this leads to less drivers (follow the dollars) as: “The cost to transition from an owner-operator model may reach $20,000 annually as truckers file for the appropriate licenses and pay additional fees and insurance”.
What’s scary as hell: AB-5 forces independent contractors to become employees in the name of ‘misclassification’. The Biden administration is trying everything to nationalize this through the PRO Act.
💩💩 Great Resignation is still here. Over 4 million Americans a month are still quitting.
👩💼 White collar office workers are in the worst position (keep reading below).
🎧 This Week On The Pod - A Human Cloud Career In Action
A single full time job isn’t safe anymore.
It’s great for healthcare, benefits, and vacation. But unless you have a significant safety net (at least a year’s runway) then you’re taking a big risk.
Instead, the future of careers is a diversified Human Cloud Career.
Learn more through Rebekah’s episode wherever you get your podcasts!
🤔 Will office workers be cut in half?
Michael Burry, investor and hedge fund manager behind “The Big Short”, said in a recent Fortune article:
“I see a bifurcated labor market developing as unskilled and semiskilled remain in short supply, but white-collar workers, having proven their redundancy during COVID, will find gross excess in the labor market, pressuring wages at the end”
How real is this? Spot on.
Why?
To say it nicely…most work in corporate is inefficient.
To say it blunt…most corporate work is a waste of time, doesn’t add value to the firm, and is stuck in a purgatory holding pattern just hoping not to be laid off (okay yeah that was pretty harsh).
This worked when full time was the ‘best of’ option. But now that you can access talent globally, in a deliverable basis, without a full time commitment, the writing is on the wall for corporate life.
Blurry continues:
“The layoffs are evidence of the glut of white-collar workers in sectors like technology, finance, and consulting, according to Burry. Blue-collar workers, on the other hand, will remain in demand, resulting in a two-tiered labor market moving forward.”
He further said the U.S. labor market is about to be sliced in half, with white-collar workers being the ones to experience job loss and falling wages.
…………………..
Do we agree?
In direction yes, but we add that full time office work will become deliverable based freelance work.
Non-deliverable office work is most at risk. Who knows what the exact percentage and number will be.
Remember the Mercer Report that said 60% of executives will substantially replace full time employees with independent workers in the next 3 years?
This is just the start to a greater trend in the shift from full time, in person office work as the default to remote first, outcome driven, and an independent contractor majority economy.
…………………..
How Can You Be Ready?
If you’re a white collar office worker with one employer check out below 👇
Advanced Level
Paid members, access below in your portal (linked below paywall):
Proposal Template
Sales and Operations Dashboard
Onboarding Template
Don’t feel like paying? Start the free trial, download the templates, then cancel. As a freelancer that’s what we do with most of these freelancer productivity solutions anyway lol
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