By 2030, experts predict AI will have eliminated many careers. Could your job be one of them? Maybe you have a job, collect a paycheck and show up every day—and still wonder if there’s really see a future for you at your current company. That’s the unsettling idea behind a category of employees identified by MIT labor economist Paul Osterman: the “disposable worker.”

Who Are The ‘Disposable Workers’?

Osterman identifies three distinct categories of disposable workers: contractors, freelancers and marginal employees. He describes the marginal category as employees who are held at arm’s length by their firm―left without job security, skill training or opportunities for promotion.

Many low-wage service workers toil in marginal jobs, but so do white-collar professionals such as adjunct university faculty and staff attorneys at law firms. When the three categories are added up, he explains that they account for more than 35% of the American workforce.

Marginal workers aren’t necessarily freelancers, independent contractors or gig workers. They can be regular employees inside an organization. The difference is that their employers don’t expect to invest in them, develop them or move them up a career ladder. And they are far more common than you might think.

In his new book, Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment, Osterman estimates more than 55 million members of the U.S. workforce fall into employment arrangements characterized by limited security, benefits or advancement opportunities. His research is based in part on an original survey of more than 6,000 workers.

The number is startling because the conventional conversation about insecure work usually focuses on Uber drivers, DoorDash workers and other members of the gig economy. Osterman argues that something much bigger is happening. “We’re not becoming a gig economy; we’re becoming a disposable one,” he says.

Meet The ‘Marginal........

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