If you work regularly and you have never received a W-2, you are probably a gig worker. That category of kinda-employed-but-not-really has mushroomed in recent years.
And while it allows the likes of Uber and Lyft to run a business with lower overhead, it creates some real issues for the people who do the work. Sociologist Alexandrea Ravenelle talked to a lot of those people for her book Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy.
The book is pre-pandemic (and pre-Prop 22, which kept California gig workers out of the W-2 ranks), but the main lessons are still valid. We revisit our interview with the author, from 2019.