GAO report finds surge in gig workers receiving federal poverty assistance

CEI’s Sean Higgins was cited by the Washington Times regarding gig workers relying on federal assistance programs.

A May 2023 working paper published by the University of Chicago found that the number of gig workers jumped from 1.8 million in 2019 to 4.9 million in 2021, a 170% increase.

“Those are mostly temporary employees who do the work piecemeal when they need to rather than full-time as a career,” said Sean Higgins, an analyst at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“In other words, they’re people on Medicaid who earn extra bucks by ride-sharing or doing deliveries when they can,” he said. “It makes sense that they would enroll in Medicaid because that program was made for people like them.”

Read the full article at the Washington Times.