The emergence of the gig economy has been a defining feature of the last decade as gig workers have emerged to take care of one-off tasks like grocery shopping, food delivery, dog walking, and more. However, as these side hustles have grown in popularity, a growing number of gig workers have come to rely on this nontraditional form of work as their primary source of income. This shift to full time gig work has come at the expense of traditional work-related benefits. That is, until last year, when Utah passed an innovative idea for portable benefits into law.
The prevailing notion of work fifty years ago was a rigid nine-to-five shift. But the gig economy has transformed the way many think about work, serving as one of many examples of the way workers today can earn on their own terms. Despite this transformation, however, U.S. labor law has hardly budged from its roots in the workplaces of the past. An unintended side effect of this outdated regulatory structure is that full-time gig workers, hardly imagined decades ago, are unable to receive work-related benefits without giving up the flexibility these opportunities afford.
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