Marketwatch | ‘There’s no retirement in this job,’ gig workers say

“Based on our studies, we will have a nation filled with older people without anything to supplement their Social Security income,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist, expert on retirement and professor at the New School university in New York. “By the time they reach 62, they will only have Social Security to rely on and their living standards will fall.”

She said that as the app-based gig economy — and other independent work — grows, she foresees a middle class that will be “downwardly mobile to poverty or near poverty” come retirement time, which is why she has long proposed a federal pension plan for all workers.

Ghilarducci also pointed out a “vicious cycle” in today’s economy: While gig companies rely on people who may not earn enough to save for retirement, some people come out of retirement to work in the gig economy because they don’t have enough money saved.

Read the article here.