(Quoted from Marshall Atkinson and atkinsontshirt.com. Full article here.)
gig e-con-o-my noun •  "A labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs." Most businesses don’t think that they fit this description.  However, as markets become more unpredictable, many different companies are faced with working this way.Balancing your labor variable just makes sense.

In the decorated apparel industry, the gig economy working class surrounds us.  You know them too.  Let’s take a peek:

• Have you ever hired a freelance artist?
• Have you ever outsourced your digitizing for embroidery?
• Have you ever used a temporary worker agency?
• Have you ever had an electrician, plumber, carpenter, or machine tech fix something “after hours” to save a buck or two?
• Have you ever used someone to help build your webpage?
• Have you ever had someone write a blog article or pay them to post content for your social media?
• Have you ever outsourced some garment relabeling work to a seamstress?
• Do you pull in more workers for seasonal help such as in the summer or Christmas holiday boom?
• Have you ever brought your kids or relatives in to help clean screens or catch shirts when you are really busy?  Always the favorite.
• Do you use a bookkeeper or accountant to review your financials?  What about a lawyer?
• What about a recruiter?  Tons of industry positions open up every day and need to be staffed.  (here’s a great one: Textile Staffing Link)
• How about me?  I do decorated apparel industry coaching constantly for shops.  But I’m not really on anyone’s permanent payroll.   

Any occupation in which workers may be hired for on-demand jobs has the loaded potential for gig employment.  To tell you the truth, I think that this type of employment is steadily growing.  Recently the McKinsey Global Institute posted that in the US and Europe there are 162 million workers that have some sort of gig economy job.  That’s 20%-30% of the entire workforce.  Quite the chunk.

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