What are microjobs

At the heart of the PajamaNation project is the concept of microjobs

“Imagine a machine that you can put into any country and when you turn the handle, generate jobs. Not regular jobs, but microjobs: short jobs that you can do at home are done and when you are paid you go on a short holiday and you have the certainty when there is another microjob waiting for you. That is living a la carte.”

I know, it takes a little while for the Microjobs concept to sink in. This is not the same thing as telecommuting, working from home for the same employer you used to work for in the office. Nor is it the same as freelancing, where you agree to work on site for perhaps 3 weeks or 2 months for an employer who doesn’t want to create a permanent post. There’s more in common perhaps with the jobbing worker who travels around doing small jobs in which he is proficient for a large number of customers. If you need some private work done on your house you will usually employ a skilled worker who quotes a price to do the job. The advent of the digital age with the spread of broadband internet access means that a huge number of jobs that previously needed a persistent and physical presence, can now be done from home as and when convenient for the remote worker, and providing attractivly competitive terms and deadlines by doing so.

Some employers will jump at the chance to reduce their fixed labour costs and slim down their core business, but many will resist at first, not wanting to give up the control they have over employees lives even while they are not getting paid. They’d like to keep people on a retainer, always avaliable and never working for anybody else but that belongs to the old days now, it’s no longer realistic.

Companies and organisations who learn to make use of the advantages of getting work done through microjobs will begin to replace ones who don’t, and this process will then accelerate. So the microjobs concept when applied en masse, will bring about nothing less than the decentralisation of employment.