Small Business Labs

MAY 20, 2021

Forerunner Ventures' The universal holding pattern: a period of trial followed by an era of opportunity   covers survey work they've done on the impact of the pandemic on consumers. One of their main findings is the desire for empowerment and independence has increased.  Key quote: The pandemic offered a taste of independence with remote work for some and a desire to have control over one’s own destiny in a fractured economy for others, making self-employment an increasingly

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 30, 2021

The U.S. Census has released new demographic data on nonemployer businesses.   Nonemployers are businesses that have an owner but don't have paid traditional full or part-time employees (W2 employees). The data comes from tax records, and you can think of nonemployers as solopreneur businesses (freelancers, independent contractors. gig workers, etc.).

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 18, 2021

After losing a U.K. Supreme Court case,  Uber this week announced it would be classifying its U.K. drivers as "workers."  This means Uber's 70,000 UK drivers will get a minimum hourly wage, holiday pay, pensions and other benefits.  Unlike the U.S., which has two worker legal classifications - self-employed and employee - the U.K. has three.   The "worker" classification is the 3rd, and "w orkers" get some, but not all, of the protections

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

We haven't seen all the Super Bowl ads yet, but we know independent workers will be featured in two of them. Squarespace's ad (below) features Dolly Parton singing 5-9, a take off on her hit song and movie 9-5.  It shows a variety of side giggers pursuing their passions. Fiverr also has a Super Bowl ad, but we haven't seen it yet.  But no doubt it will feature creative independents.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 28, 2021

The number of people who have side hustles (also called side gigs) has been growing rapidly over the past 5 years.   The reasons for this growth - and how to start and run a side gig - are nicely explained in CNBC's extensive field guide The Ultimate Side Hustle Guide. Key quote on why more people are starting side gigs: "Starting a side business is one of the smartest financial moves you can make right now.

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Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 20, 2020

We'll be back next week.

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Holidays 195

Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 8, 2020

In the recent election, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 22. The passage of Prop 22 means that firms like Uber and Lyft can legally classify their drivers as contractors instead of employees.  And it has also effectively created a new, 3rd way to classify workers. The reason is Prop 22 requires firms like Uber and Lyft to provide their drivers with benefits not normally given to independent contractors.  Other countries have long had third ways to classify workers.

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Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 7, 2020

The interest and investments in vertical and indoor farms has been growing steadily for several  years. This is due to the advantages of indoor farming. By taking plants out of their outdoor environments and moving them inside to a controlled environment you can eliminate the problems associated with drought, pests, weeds and extreme weather. You can also locate farms closer to urban areas, which means fresher produce for consumers and lower transportation costs.  But COVID-19 has ad

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Environment 228

Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Proposition 22, a California ballot measure calling for the exemption of rideshare and delivery drivers being classified as employees, passed by what could be called a landslide - 58% for vs. 41% against.  Prop 22 passing is a major win for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other app-based rideshare and delivery firms.  It means they won't have to reclassify their drivers as employees, which would have been required had the measure failed.

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 26, 2020

One of the more interesting findings of the MBO Partners 2020 Digital Nomad study is the large number of Americans who aren't currently digital nomads who say they want to be. Key quote from Bloomberg's When You Can’t Work From Barcelona, Boulder Might Do , which covers the study: " there is a massive and growing reserve army of digital-nomad wannabes — people who tell the survey-takers they’re planning on going nomadic in the next two or three years, or at least thinking about it.&#

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Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

Desktop Metal , a leader in 3D printing with printers than can build metal parts, is going public.  Supporters of the company claim this is the beginning of a much more successful era for 3D printing, which they're calling 3D printing 2.0. As the Crunchbase article 3D Printing Investment Going Vertical As Big Exit Looms points out, 3D printing has been around a long time and, so far, has not lived up to its hype.  Key quote: Transformative technologies often get massively overhyp

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 31, 2020

According to the National Human Genome Research Institute synthetic biology is: " a field of science that involves redesigning organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to have new abilities. Synthetic biology researchers and companies around the world are harnessing the power of nature to solve problems in medicine, manufacturing and agriculture." Synthetic biology is not a new trend.

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UPS 196

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 25, 2020

The U.S. Census started a COVID-19 impact survey back in April to measure how the pandemic was impacting small businesses.  The weekly surveys ran until the end of June. Unfortunately, the pandemic wasn't over by then.  But after skipping 6 weeks, they're back  with what they are calling phase 2 of the surveys. Things haven't improved much over the 6-week layoff according to the small businesses surveyed - 34% of the respondents said the pandemic has had a large neg

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AT&T 214

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 4, 2020

The Hamilton Project essay The Nature of Work after the COVID Crisis: Too Few Low-Wage Jobs is authored by MIT economists David Autor and Elisabeth Reynolds.  The essay covers four shifts being accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on labor markets.  And, according to the authors, all four potentially have significant, negative consequences for low wage workers, economic inequality and overall employment.  The four are: 1.  Telepresence : The essay points

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Small Business Labs

JULY 14, 2020

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA) is part of the federal CARES stimulus act passed in March. The PUA extends unemployment insurance to the self-employed, independent contractors, gig economy workers, and others who typically don't qualify. It's clearly been a success, with about 14 million workers receiving aid through the PUA.   The chart below (click to enlarge) is from CNBC's Job losses remain ‘enormous’: Coronavirus unemployment claims are worst in hi

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 24, 2020

The Effects of the Coronavirus on Hours of Work in Small Businesses , from Yale's Tobin Center for Economic Policy, shows the pandemic's dramatic and ongoing impact on small businesses.  The study uses data from Homebase , which provides scheduling and time tracking tools for small businesses, to measure the change in overall hours worked by small business employees.

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 27, 2020

It’s clear remote work, and especially working from home , are trends that are being amplified and accelerated by the COVID 19 pandemic and related economic shutdown.   But one group of remote workers are mostly not benefiting from the pandemic - digital nomads.    These are people who embrace a location-independent, technology-enabled lifestyle that allows them to travel and work remotely, anywhere in the world that has decent Internet connections.  But being nomad

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 16, 2020

On April 2nd we released a set of scenarios with estimates of how high the unemployment rate may go in 2020 due to the pandemic induced recession.  As our chart below (click to enlarge) shows, already the current estimated unemployment rate (18%) has likely reached our optimistic case (18%).   Last week's unemployment claims came in at 5.2 million, which brings the total unemployment claims over the past 4 weeks to 22 million.  22 million is a bit over 13% of working

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 29, 2020

Last week Congress passed and the president signed the CARES Act, a $2 trillion stimulus bill designed to help businesses and Americans weather the economic storm caused by the COVID 19 pandemic. Independent workers (the self-employed, freelancers, gig workers, etc.) qualify for a number of assistance programs contained in the bill.  We'll be covering these over the next couple of days.   But we want to specifically call out that under the bill most independent workers qual

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Policies 227

Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

The San Diego Union Tribune's Would you live in a van? Two San Diego women launch startup for boho traveler movement covers a new app - conveniently called The VanLife App - targeted at VanLife nomads. The article provides a good description of VanLife: "For those who haven’t heard of it, “vanlife” refers to a recent bohemian trend of people buying cargo vans, old ambulances, school buses and other boxy vehicles, and converting them into livable apartments on wheels (think of it as a do-

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Travel AT&T 161

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 14, 2020

The Johns Hopkins Non-Profit Economic Data Project recently released its 2019 Non-Profit Employment Report.  There are two key findings.  The first is the U.S non-profit sector is big, employing 12.3 million paid workers.   As the study chart below shows, this makes the non-profit sector as big in terms of employment as the U.S. manufacturing sector.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 7, 2020

California's new labor law, AB5, was meant to help Uber and Lyft drivers - and others - get hired as traditional employees with the hope this would increase their pay and financial security.  But the broadly worded and vague language of the new law is leading to a wide range of unintended negative consequences. It's also resulted in a growing backlash among independent workers as well as organizations that hire them.

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 30, 2019

Pew internet's Experts Optimistic About the Next 50 Years of Digital Life project asked hundreds of technology experts how people's lives might be impacted by the evolution of the internet over the next 50 years. 72% of the respondents said there would be change for the better ,   25% said there would be change for the worse and  3%  believe there would be no significant change.

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Policies UPS 100

Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

WeWork's troubles seem to be going from bad to worse. They lowered their target IPO valuation from their last private funding round value of $47 billion to under $20 billion - and maybe as low as $10 billion. But after reading about WeWork's huge losses and highly questionable corporate governance practices in their S-! ,  even that wasn't enough to attract investors.

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UPS 168

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 27, 2019

As we pointed out yesterday , working remotely is increasingly common for both independent workers and those with traditional jobs.  Two recent articles also point this out and add several new buzzwords to our remote work vocabulary. The Harvard Business Review's Is It Time to Let Employees Work from Anywhere? points out there is a new form of remote work emerging which they refer to as "WFA" (work from anywhere).

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Small Business Labs

AUGUST 26, 2019

According to data from the 2019 MBO Partners State of Independence study , 83% of full-time independent workers report working remotely at least some of the time, and 31% report working remotely full-time. As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), this is substantially higher than what traditional full-time job holders report.  That full-time independent workers are more likely to work remotely than full-time traditional job holders is no surprise.

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2019 166

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 15, 2019

WeWork released its S-1 this week, which is the legal document a company files prior to going public.  WeWork going public is a bit of a watershed moment for the coworking industry. It's the first of the new wave of coworking spaces to do so. It's also a highly watched and controversial company, particularly due to its high private valuation and steep losses.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 18, 2019

According to data from the U.S, Census 2016 Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (the most recent data available), the median U.S. employer small business (those with paid traditional employees) generated less than $400k in revenue in 2016. Our title includes the word "still" because we posted on this data back in 2016 , when 2014 data was most recent available.

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Small Business Labs

JUNE 13, 2019

Yesterday the CEO's of Uber and Lyft published an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle offering to support efforts to improve the working conditions, wages and rights of their drivers.  The offer is in response to a bill in the California legislature that would make it much more difficult for companies to classify workers as independent contractors.  The new legislation would codify a ruling by the California Supreme Court in the Dynamex case.

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Small Business Labs

APRIL 16, 2019

From Jobs to Superjobs covers the results of a Deloitte study looking at how automation and A.I are changing work and jobs. The key finding is Deloitte sees automation changing jobs instead of simply replacing workers. By this they mean many jobs are evolving and requiring new combinations of human skills and capabilities. In particular, they see jobs increasingly requiring both hard and soft skills.

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Small Business Labs

MARCH 19, 2019

We're often asked what the most popular professions are for freelancers and independent workers. This is not as easy a question to answer as it seems. Independent workers serve all industries, work with both businesses and consumers and participate in pretty much every job type and profession. They also tend to self-identify in very specific and often idiosyncratic ways.

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

It's been an interesting couple of weeks in the food delivery industry.  Controversy swirled around grocery delivery company Instacart and their policy on tipping, witch many called wage theft. While this led to Instacart changing their policy, other food delivery companies so far are continuing with their tipping practices despite complaints by both drivers and customers.  The furor over tipping overshadowed a lot of news showing that the food delivery industry continues to boom

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

"Job crafting" describes the ways in which employees redesign and customize their jobs to foster greater work satisfaction and engagement. This is done by breaking a job into tasks and then deciding what to do less and more of.  The New York Times article How to Make Work Better covers job crafting and suggests greater use of it by those with traditional jobs would make work much better.  It also points out that the academic researchers who came up with the concept were "

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Forms UPS 182

Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 4, 2019

Rig Up , an online talent marketplace that connects oilfield workers who are looking for a job with oil and gas companies, recently announced it had raised $60 million in VC funding.  The company was founded in 2014 and it pre-qualifies contract oilfield workers and helps them find gigs quickly and easily with energy firms.  Thanks to fracking, U.S. oil and gas production has been growing steadily for the last decade, with oil production at an all time high.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 29, 2019

One area of the gig economy that is finally starting to get attention is it expands the number of low friction, highly flexible work options.  By "low friction" we mean it's quick and easy to start earning money and it requires little or nothing in terms of an initial investment. With most of the online gig platforms you can sign up and be earning money in just a few days or less.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 14, 2019

Pew Research recently did a study on the use of ride sharing services by Americans. Key quote on their findings: "The share of Americans who use ride-hailing services has increased dramatically. Today, 36% of U.S. adults say they have ever used a ride-hailing service such as Uber or Lyft, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in fall 2018.

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Small Business Labs

DECEMBER 18, 2018

Marketplace and Edison research recently released Americans and the Gig Economy, a survey of gig workers.  The survey covered a lot of ground, including finding about 24% of American 18 and older are gig workers. This works out to a bit more than 60 million.  The survey also asked a series of questions about economic anxiety. They found gig workers, on average, experience more economic anxiety than those with traditional jobs.

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