Gig Economy Workforce to Double in Four Years

The recipient of a bachelor’s in accounting from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Theodore "Ted" Catino is an entrepreneur with decades of experience. Ted Catino's latest venture is GigSmart, a mobile application that helps employers and employees better navigate the ever-expanding gig economy. 

A recent study from Emergent Research and Intuit projected that by 2021, some 9.2 million Americans will have jobs in the gig economy, the name given to the employment sector encompassing on-demand freelance work obtained through companies like Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit. As of 2016, an estimated 3.9 million Americans were gig workers, and that number is projected to rise steadily over the next five years. By the end of 2017, as many as 4.8 million Americans will have some form of gig employment, which is greater than the number of people who work in the information sector and only 2 million fewer than the amount of workers in construction.

The rapid rise of the gig economy has helped businesses such as Intuit, which produces TurboTax and QuickBooks. On May 24, the company's stock reached an all-time high thanks to an increasing number of freelance workers requiring the use of its services.

---