What the Gig Economy Taught Me About Being Human

I’ve spent nine years inside the gig economy. I write from home in rural West Virginia, a place where factory jobs disappeared long ago and this new way of working arrived like the only option left. I chase payments, explain to my two daughters why we need to wait for ice cream when a client pays late, and wonder sometimes if anyone on the other end of the screen knows I’m a person at all.

Before this, I spent significant time in Kenya. I worked as a volunteer. I tutored college students and primary school kids. I learned to move through the world differently there. People showed up for each other not because it was efficient but because that’s what people do. When a student struggled, others helped. When someone needed something, the community found a way. They had far fewer resources than anyone I know here. They also had something I’m not sure how to name. Connection, maybe. The kind that doesn’t need to be scheduled.

Coming back to the United States, to this life of freelance work and isolated screens, has taught me something I didn’t expect. The gig economy sells freedom. Flexibility. Being your own boss. What it doesn’t mention is the trade-off. You trade stability for uncertainty. You trade colleagues for algorithms. You trade relationships for ratings.

The Humanist Manifesto III says that humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships. It also says we are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity. I’ve thought about those words a lot lately. Because the gig economy, as currently structured, makes both of these nearly impossible to practice.

Think about how it works. A client posts a job. I submit a proposal. If selected, I complete the work and never meet the person on the other end. Maybe we exchange emails. Maybe we never even do that. The platform mediates everything. It takes its cut, handles the communication, and when the work is done, we’re both expected to move on. There’s no relationship to speak of. Just a transaction.

And then there’s the rating. After every job, the client rates me. One to five stars. A number that affects whether I’ll get the next job. I rate them too. We’re all just numbers to each other. You can’t treat someone with dignity when they’re reduced to a username and a score. You can’t find meaning in a relationship that never existed.

I remember one client, years ago, who paid late every single month. Not maliciously, I think. They were just disorganized. But each late payment meant a conversation with my daughters about why we couldn’t go out that weekend. Each late payment meant another night working instead of being present. That client never knew any of this. To them, I was a freelancer, not a father. A vendor, not a person.

In Kenya, the students I worked with had none of these systems. They also had no safety net. No guaranteed income. No promise that tomorrow would be easier than today. And yet they built community in ways I rarely see here. They shared what little they had. They looked out for each other. They understood something that the platforms seem to have forgotten: that we need each other, not just for survival but for meaning.

I think about one student in particular. Her name was Akinyi. She walked an hour each way to school because there was no bus and her family couldn’t afford the fare. She shared a textbook with three other students because there weren’t enough to go around. And yet she was always the first to offer help when someone else struggled. She organized study groups. She checked on younger students. She built community out of nothing because she understood that we rise together or not at all.

I’m not romanticizing poverty or hardship. Akinyi deserved better resources, better infrastructure, better opportunities. But she also had something I’ve lost track of in my nine years of freelancing. She knew the people around her. She was known in return.

The contrast haunts me sometimes. Here, I have everything I need materially. A comfortable home. Food on the table. Schools for my daughters. And yet I work alone, day after day, with no one to share the small moments with. No colleague to ask how my weekend went. No one who knows my daughters’ names. The platforms promise connection to a global marketplace. What they deliver is isolation.

The gig economy is not going away. It’s growing. More workers every year piece together income from multiple platforms, multiple clients, multiple screens. According to recent data, more than one-third of U.S. workers now participate in the gig economy in some capacity. We tell ourselves this is the future of work. Maybe it is. But we rarely ask what this future costs us.

What does it do to a person to be constantly measured, constantly rated, constantly treated as a data point instead of a human being? What does it do to communities when work becomes something we do alone, in our homes, staring at screens, with no colleagues to share the day with? What does it do to our children when they watch us chase payments instead of building something together?

I don’t have easy answers. I have my own experience. I have the contrast between two places I’ve called home. I have the memory of Akinyi and students like her who had less and yet seemed to have more of what matters.

The humanist tradition asks us to think about human dignity, about compassion, about the greater good. These are not abstract concepts. They are tested every day in the way we structure work. The gig economy fails that test in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

Consider what a humanist approach to work might look like. It would start from the premise that workers are people first, not resources to be optimized. It would recognize that relationships matter, that community matters, that time with family matters. It would measure success not by efficiency alone but by whether people can live with dignity and find meaning in what they do.

None of this is impossible. Portable benefits that follow the worker, not the employer. Platforms that encourage long-term relationships instead of one-off transactions. Policies that protect workers from the worst effects of algorithmic management. These are all within reach if we decide they matter.

I still freelance. I still chase payments. I still explain to my daughters why we wait. But I also try to remember what Kenya taught me. That we are social by nature. That meaning comes from relationships, not transactions. That dignity is not something algorithms can measure.

Last week, my younger daughter drew a picture of our family eating ice cream. She taped it to my monitor so I could see it while I worked. It was her way of reminding me what matters. The drawing is still there, slightly curled at the edges, a small act of humanity in a room full of screens.

It’s a hard lesson to hold onto when the algorithm is always watching. I’m still learning. I suspect we all are.