As per business research conducted by the Economic Modeling Specialists International, the number of people employed in freelance or part-time rose to more than thirty million in the USA by 2014 and set to rise further. It represents nearly a fifth of the overall workforce. Yet, no proper national level policies exist to facilitate the gig-economy workers. Traditional employment protections, vacations, insurance or retirement benefits do not exist for them but only the full-time employees. This is partly due to the fact that historically companies wanted the ownership of talent within the organization, but the internet took away those benefits so now companies are happy to collaborate with external experts. Even in the education sphere, MOOCs has facilitated the ease of doing Executive MBA without from the comfort of one’s computer system. Companies such as Uber, Etsy, Lyft, Airbnb or Zipcar have been at the forefront of this new trend yet continue to get away by providing minimum protection to its workers who are categorized as contractors and not employees. It is time that the peer economy gets formally recognized by companies and governments alike so that freelance workers get the protections due to them.

 https://hbr.org/2015/07/who-benefits-from-the-peer-to-peer-economy