Twelve Years When Nobody Counted
Documents the Bureau of Labor Statistics Contingent Worker Supplement — its five runs between 1995 and 2005, the twelve-year absence, and its 2017 return — and explains what the gap did to the policy debate.
Section 2 of five
The Count
The surveys, supplements, and statistical series that try to measure a category nobody has agreed to define.
5 pieces in this section
The Survey That Changed Each Year It Was Taken
A commissioned count of American freelancers grew, shrank, and grew again. The methodology moved with it — and the funders' names were on every edition.
McKinsey Counted 162 Million and the Caveats Started on Page Two
A landmark 2016 figure reshaped the policy debate — but the report's own methodology quietly explained why no single number could.
What the ONS Series Captures and What It Misses
Two counting systems, the same workers, different numbers.
Gig, Contingent, Own-Account, Self-Employed: Not Synonyms
The same person can appear in four statistical categories simultaneously — or none. How agencies count independent workers depends almost entirely on which question they asked first.
The other sections
Eight landing pages. Every piece is reachable from one of them, or from the archive.