Yves here. I must confess, despite often invoking the term precariat, to being unaware that it was not just coined by Guy Standing, but that he also published an entire book about it, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. I find this omission particularly surprising since I have seen the concept of precarity regularly mentioned in venue like the Economist and the Financial Times, which typically do provide credit. So thanks to Richard Murphy for highlighting Standing’s contribution.
Having said that, readers know I am not keen about a UBI as a solution to the downtrodden status of many workers. Broad social safety nets increasingly serve to subsidize employers, perpetuating their ability to pay terrible wages. From the Guardian last month:
Many workers at some of the largest US corporations have no choice but to rely on healthcare and food assistance because of low wages, even as CEO compensation continues to grow, according to a new report released Wednesday.
The report, published by the Institute of Policy Studies, focuses on 20 of the S&P 500 corporations that have primarily US-based workforces and report the lowest median wages of the group.
Collectively, this “Low-Wage 20” employs 6.7 million people in the US. The median pay at a majority (75%) of the companies is lower than the income minimum for a family of three to be eligible for Medicaid in most states. At 13 of the companies, median pay was also lower than the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program income threshold for a family of three.
Nearly a quarter of Walmart employees (29.3%) and half of Amazon workers (48.4%) in the Nevada – which collects Medicaid enrollment numbers among employees at large companies – were on Medicaid in 2024, according to the report.
Also keep in mind that Silicon Valley squillionaires are keen about a UBI because it lowers the cost of them running the high-end sweatshops known as incubators.
Either higher minimum wages, stronger protections for union organizing and/or a job guarantee are better remedies. And before you say that’s unrealistic, the odds of getting a job guarantee, where people provide services as opposed to get “welfare” is more viable politically, even if admittedly remote.
By Richard Murphy, Emeritus Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School and a director of Tax Research LLP. Originally published at Funding the Future
The Rise of the Precariat
Guy Standing identified the precariat as a class characterised by uncertainty. Members of the precariat often experience:
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short-term or zero-hours contracts,
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fluctuating income,
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limited access to benefits or protections,
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lack of occupational identity,
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and minimal control over working conditions.
This is not simply low pay. It is a condition of permanent instability. The precariat cannot plan, save, or build a secure future.
Guy argues that this condition is becoming the norm rather than the exception.
The Erosion of Labour Rights
Traditional labour markets offered a degree of stability: long-term employment, predictable wages, and access to social security. These arrangements were supported by unions, regulation and welfare systems.
In recent decades, many of these protections have been deliberately weakened. Labour markets have become more flexible, shifting risk from employers to workers. Individuals are now expected to absorb fluctuations in demand, income, and employment, whereas in the pre-neoliberal era, employers did. The result has been a transfer of insecurity from institutions to individuals.
Work Without Identity
Guy Standing emphasises that work is not only a source of income but also of identity and social belonging. Stable occupations provide a sense of purpose, skill and recognition.
His argument is that the precariat lacks this foundation. Jobs are often fragmented, temporary and interchangeable. As a result, workers may move frequently between roles without developing a coherent career or professional identity.
This has psychological and social consequences. Without stable roles, individuals can feel disconnected from both their work and their communities.
The Politics of Insecurity
Standing describes the precariat as a “dangerous class” not because it is inherently disruptive, but because insecurity breeds frustration, resentment and vulnerability to political manipulation.
When people lack stability and voice, they may turn to populist movements, authoritarian leaders or divisive narratives that promise certainty. Economic insecurity can therefore translate into political instability. We are now seeing the consequences of that: Guy’s forecasts were prescient.
The condition of the precariat is not only an economic issue. It is a democratic one.
Basic income as a response
Guy Standing has been a prominent advocate of universal basic income (UBI) as a way to address precarity. A guaranteed income, he argues, would provide a foundation of security, enabling individuals to make choices about work, education and participation without constant fear of destitution.
UBI is. not intended, in Guy’s view, as a replacement for work, but as a means of restoring autonomy and dignity in a labour market that no longer provides them reliably. Whether or not one agrees with this proposal, it reflects the scale of the problem Standing identifies.
What Answering the Guy Standing Question Would Require
Taking Guy Standing’s analysis seriously would require confronting the structural nature of precarity. At minimum, this would involve:
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Restoring economic security and ensuring that individuals are not exposed to constant income instability.
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Rebuilding labour rights and protections, adapting them to new forms of work.
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Recognising the social value of work beyond wages, including care and community roles.
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Exploring mechanisms such as a universal basic income to provide a stable foundation.
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Addressing the broader causes of insecurity, including inequality and market deregulation.
These changes would not eliminate flexibility. They would rebalance risk.
Inference
The Guy Standing Question highlights a transformation at the heart of modern economies. Work no longer guarantees stability, and insecurity is becoming a defining feature of economic life. This challenges the assumption that labour markets naturally provide both income and social integration.
If large segments of the population live without security, identity or voice, the consequences extend beyond economicsinto politics and social cohesion.
To answer Guy Standing’s question is to recognise that an economy built on widespread precarity cannot be considered either efficient or just, and that restoring security is not a secondary concern, but a central requirement for a stable and functioning society.
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This is reflected in popular culture as well – if you stay current with American movies and series, much of it is get-rich-quick scenarios, down on their luck individuals finding themselves eventually through criminality, and the normalizing of prison time. The film Emily the Criminal (2022) comes to mind.
Breaking Bad was an unacknowledged watershed IMO.
The analytic reference to “traditional labor markets” makes me uncomfortable. I challenge the implicit assumptions that the wage-employment relation is usefully understood as occurring in a context resembling market exchange. And, I do not think the achievement of stable, middle-class income in an earlier era should be thought a by-product of “tradition”.
The role of institutional sectors in creating and exploiting the precariat deserves attention. It is not just employers holding down wages. The ubiquity of gambling and debt traps and eclipse of thrift institutions and cooperatives play a part, as readers of NC will appreciate.
Politically, the precariat is convenient to the comforts and status-seeking of the PMC and that’s another big political obstacle to effective amelioration.
I don’t think that Guy Standing coined the term precariat. I am Italian and 67 years old, and the word “precariato” as a collective noun for “precari” i.e., people holding temporary jobs, has been around since I was a child in the 1960’s. Standing might have translated it into English by removing the final “o” but he didn’t coin anything.
I would think that the point of a UBI is for people to be able to live without taking the low paying BS jobs out there this forcing corporations to pay better wages and working conditions. We we do now ie SNAP and Medicaid is what allows companies to be able to offer low wages.
Rather than a single solution — there is no silver bullet — implement everything but set incentives to game employers into having to offer better pay via setting rates in the order:
UBI < minimum wage < job guarantee
Effectively, UBI is the safety net for those who don’t want to work — disability is for those that can’t work, of course.
Employers must compete with the job guarantee, which would be public jobs providing useful services for the public. For example, street cleaners should always be paid better than minimum wage. (Many more examples from the core of public health: refuse collection, sewage, potable water on tap, street cleaning, etc. A large part of what is called civilisation is hygiene.)
I worked for Wells Fargo (55,000 employees) and Patagonia clothing (625 employees). Two pretty well-known companies, with varied reputations. Great benefits, including 401K and good health insurance.
I am now a sole proprietor very small shop no-employee no safety net rectum-pucker micro business owner.
Essentially a contract laborer with no benefits. No extraction of excess labor of an employee (gross!)
The difference between the the employee paradigm and self-employment is illuminating.
One’s thinking, view of the world, self, labor / employer relationship, government, taxes –evolves.
Somewhere in this precarity discussion might be the notion of Universal Utilities– central-run lowest-cost efficient “Utility” functions? I think first and foremost of health care, including dental and optical.
It seems a retirement system of some sort as well. A ‘social safety net’ Quality schools, daycare, eldercare.
Maybe NO ONE continues to be an employee- we are all free to contract every day. It might create some parity with those in need of laborers?
It all gets blown apart with automation, AI, and a persistent enjoyment of Capitalism and taking advantage of the laborer’s capital of production.
I am not sure where it is all headed, but I am quite confident that the US legislators, government, Courts, and tech broligarchs are NOT ‘on it’ in terms of formulating rational, workable policy that is the best bang for the buck greatest good-greatest number.
There are periodic articles supposedly quoting Elroy Musk that we won’t have to work in the near future?
Well, what will we do for money, who will buy ‘thneeds’, where will the money come from? Elroy, Bezos, Gates and Zuckerberg all prepared to open their wallets and Share, via a 95% global tax rate on them?
Also, there is the human spirit aspect of work- self-worth and satisfaction of “Deeds Done”.
EF Schumacher had a great little read on “Good Work”… I can’t recall if he anticipated a jobless future via ‘tech’ .
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/313764.Good_Work
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1117634.Small_Is_Beautiful (Econ as if People mattered)
and one more title for the Navel Gaze…
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4250997-between-capitalism-and-socialism?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=KvBYavS9ZD&rank=1
What a time to be alive.
IMO you have it exactly right. If there were “Universal Utilities– health care, including dental and optical, a retirement system of some sort, quality schools, daycare, eldercare” enslavement of us “laborers” would be significantly harder.
Sad times.
First World Problems!
Some may have seen this publication before, but I can recommend the 2016 book “Four Futures: Life After Capitalism” by Peter Frase, which posits some scenarios after capitalism, but my reading implies that 2 of those (shitty) futures are still operating when applied to capitalist Nation States, and precarity seems to be there in the end stage of those two options.
The Hierarchy-Equality axis says it all, and the way as many jobs as possible are being turned into low wage, low security, low expertise and competence is just a win for private property cohesion, and an erosion of communal benefits of employment rights etc.
We even have a travesty here in OZ, where the labour laws permit and employer, (in the hospitality sector) to only pay superannuation to casual employees if they work for more than 5 months. What do people expect, but sacking a young person a week before they tick over , and just getting someone else.
I was told this by a lefty academic who had bought a small sandwich and coffee shop after retirement, and it was her accountant who “told” her to do it that way, to save her money.
She didn’t of course, out of principles, but WTF…
If you enter into reading this book, you will probably be able to recognise the Exterminism future scenario, its not really future, its here….
For those who’d prefer to listen to a discussion of the book from a Lefty perspective I recommend the second episode or the GIU podcast (now ended) here…
As noted in the podcast discussion, Exterminism has always been a stage/period in capitalist accumulation, aka Marx’s, category “primitive accumulation”, which means in practice wars, killing, displacing or converting indigenous people to accept stealing land…
Frontier Wars…
If you step back and squint, what becomes pretty clear, is regarding employment, colonised , and then citizenised indigenous people experienced little protection from precarious employment, and its just the next tier or class ‘above’ immigrants, and peoples of colour’s labour, that is now a new version of it, Organised Abandonment…
Although this term is usually applied to a community setting, I think its broadly applicable.
What a Mess!
Looks to me like “the Frontier Wars” never ended …
UBI could very easily function as part of a general framework of social support, but I agree with Ms Yves that it is not a solution to capitalist malfeasance. The MMT team advocates a Federal Jobs Guarantee that would serve workers better and have a positive influence on social well-being (the opposite of precarity), but should not be the only program to do so. Social Security and SSI and Disability as well as UBI can all work together case by case.
After Hurricane Michael on the Florida Panhandle, there was general physical and economic devastation, ie, no jobs, no places of work. For a while, people worked in emergency mode, free of normal monetary exchange, but when some Federal bureaucrat initiated what was in effect a Federal Jobs Guarantee, hundreds of workers got paying work. The cleanup progressed rapidly, then the repair and restoration went into effect. Now, the Feds could have done their usual and hired contractors and immigrants and perhaps the work would have been more efficient. But as it was, the work got done and local people with local money revived local business.