One of the side effects of having the lowest unemployment rate in 35 years is that it’s hard to find anyone to do anything for you.
Restaurants display “Sorry, but we’re closed” signs, blaming staff shortages, and tradies take forever to get even modest jobs done for lack of labourers. Try finding a gasfitter who can attend to your needs in the next three months.
The recent frenzy of interest in artificial intelligence may, once the hype has receded, actually produce some labour-saving gains for us, freeing up office admin workers for redeployment. But the gains will be mainly in the digital realm, letting you use an intelligent chatbot assistant to book airline tickets or avoid the tedium of making PowerPoint presentations.
The tight labour market is leading to the diversification of the gig economy and task-oriented start-ups are gaining traction here. It turns out there are plenty of people willing to run a casual errand here and there for a fee rather than committing to a day job.
I had an approach last week from tagVIP, “a team of personal assistants who can take care of a bunch of your personal, non-work-related tasks”.
For $36 a week, tagVIP will complete a series of errands, such as a weekly drycleaning pick-up and drop-off, a fortnightly online grocery shop, and a monthly drop-off of your pet for grooming. For $80 a week, they’ll even manage my email inbox.
It’s clearly aimed at people who are so busy trying to find staff to keep their business running that even the basic day-to-day chores are too much.
“We’re very proud to be allowed to share that one of our clients is Tory Whanau, our new mayor!” the Wellington tagVIP rep told me.
A friend of mine actually did hire someone to manage their email inbox. But the cost was prohibitive here, so he went to the Philippines by way of the start-up BruntWork, which connects busy people with virtual assistants paid US$4-$8 an hour. Every day, his assistant responds to emails on his behalf, makes appointments and manages his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.
On ezypeazy.co.nz, “posters” advertise odd jobs they want a hand with. Last week, Tom in Māngere Bridge needed to mount a TV on his lounge wall and was willing to pay $25 for a “tasker” to help him do it. Within minutes, he had two taskers offering assistance.
The ezypeazy payments, performance reviews and dispute resolution are all done via a smartphone app, with the company taking a cut of the proceeds – continuing a trend set by Airbnb and Uber. All this sounds ideal for our labour-constrained and inflation-ravaged times.
But there’s one area where we should proceed with caution when it comes to the gig economy – elder care. We have an overburdened health sector and an ageing population. Many seniors are struggling and in need of help.
The answer in the US has been to outsource low-level assistance for seniors to companies such as Papa, which is described as a “family-on-demand TaskRabbit for seniors”.
The big US health insurers use Papa to find “pals” to run chores for “papas”, who are the policyholders, shuttle them to doctor appointments and even just hang out and keep them company. It is big business. Papa has raised US$240 million in funding so far.
But an investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek last week uncovered a shocking list of complaints to Papa, alleging sexual harassment, unlawful imprisonment and theft by pals. Sometimes, it is the papas doing the abusing.
A largely unregulated market has attracted low-skilled workers with little experience in elder care. It’s like the wild early days of Uber all over again, only this time bewildered seniors are being taken for a ride. That’s one gig-economy innovation we need to resist.
