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Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment
A revealing look at the decline in formal employment in favor of hiring contractors, freelancers, temps, and marginal workers, who are excluded from traditional benefits and career ladders.
Companies cannot exist without workers, but they are increasingly reluctant to have employees. Instead of providing the benefits and protections that have traditionally come with employee status, businesses are turning to tactics that let them treat people as interchangeable parts, to be used and discarded as needed. Drawing on an original survey of over 6,000 workers, Disposable Workers reveals the striking extent of this transformation across the occupational hierarchy, affecting everyone from janitors to nurses.
Paul Osterman identifies three distinct categories of disposable contractors, freelancers, and marginal employees. The marginal category, unique to Osterman’s analysis, describes workers who are employees from a narrow legal standpoint but are held at arm’s length by their firm―left without job security, skill training, or opportunities for promotion. Many low-wage service workers toil in marginal jobs, but so do white-collar professionals such as adjunct university faculty and staff attorneys at law firms. When the three categories are added up, they account for more than 35 percent of the American workforce.
Not all disposable workers object to their arrangements. But most contractors and marginal employees would prefer standard employment, and there is a significant cost to their current status. In response, Disposable Workers offers a range of policy recommendations, including mechanisms to prevent over-reliance on contracting and freelancing as well as reforms to improve job quality for part-timers and marginal employees. As the deconstruction of employment affects more and more workers, the importance of such measures will only grow.
Companies cannot exist without workers, but they are increasingly reluctant to have employees. Instead of providing the benefits and protections that have traditionally come with employee status, businesses are turning to tactics that let them treat people as interchangeable parts, to be used and discarded as needed. Drawing on an original survey of over 6,000 workers, Disposable Workers reveals the striking extent of this transformation across the occupational hierarchy, affecting everyone from janitors to nurses.
Paul Osterman identifies three distinct categories of disposable contractors, freelancers, and marginal employees. The marginal category, unique to Osterman’s analysis, describes workers who are employees from a narrow legal standpoint but are held at arm’s length by their firm―left without job security, skill training, or opportunities for promotion. Many low-wage service workers toil in marginal jobs, but so do white-collar professionals such as adjunct university faculty and staff attorneys at law firms. When the three categories are added up, they account for more than 35 percent of the American workforce.
Not all disposable workers object to their arrangements. But most contractors and marginal employees would prefer standard employment, and there is a significant cost to their current status. In response, Disposable Workers offers a range of policy recommendations, including mechanisms to prevent over-reliance on contracting and freelancing as well as reforms to improve job quality for part-timers and marginal employees. As the deconstruction of employment affects more and more workers, the importance of such measures will only grow.
- GenresNonfictionEconomics
208 pages, Hardcover
Published August 11, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 6, 2026
What stayed with me about Disposable Workers is how Osterman complicates the usual picture of insecure work. The distinction between contractors, freelancers, and what he calls marginal employees gives the book a useful vocabulary for understanding why someone can technically have a job while remaining disconnected from security, training, advancement, and the benefits associated with standard employment.
The scale of the research also gives the argument weight. Drawing on a survey of more than 6,000 workers, Osterman shows that this pattern reaches far beyond the lowest paid occupations, extending into professions such as nursing, university teaching, and law. That range makes the transformation of employment feel less like an isolated labor market problem and more like a structural change affecting different levels of the workforce.
Readers interested in economics, labor policy, workplace sociology, and the future of employment will find plenty to examine here. What makes the book especially useful is its movement from diagnosis to possible reforms, asking not only how employment is changing, but what better work arrangements might look like.
The scale of the research also gives the argument weight. Drawing on a survey of more than 6,000 workers, Osterman shows that this pattern reaches far beyond the lowest paid occupations, extending into professions such as nursing, university teaching, and law. That range makes the transformation of employment feel less like an isolated labor market problem and more like a structural change affecting different levels of the workforce.
Readers interested in economics, labor policy, workplace sociology, and the future of employment will find plenty to examine here. What makes the book especially useful is its movement from diagnosis to possible reforms, asking not only how employment is changing, but what better work arrangements might look like.
October 2, 2026
Solid and a very carefully researched 2026 book on the nature of work. And even more so, about the several sharp winds of change (including AI), will signify for the nature of work. Prof. Osterman teaches at MIT Sloan School of Management, and has written several other books. Although dense with the details of his research, the book is very important.
Decades ago, myself and thousands of other college students ... on edge about future work prospects ... all had to read Working by Studs Terkel (assigned by 2 of my classes, because Rutgers had a strong Labor Studies element.) Although somewhat different in approach, this is the clarion call for the 2020s. In a better world, our policy holders and WH Cabinet officials would read Chapters 10, 11 maybe on repeat.
Rating: 4.0-4.4 stars/5.0 stars.
Decades ago, myself and thousands of other college students ... on edge about future work prospects ... all had to read Working by Studs Terkel (assigned by 2 of my classes, because Rutgers had a strong Labor Studies element.) Although somewhat different in approach, this is the clarion call for the 2020s. In a better world, our policy holders and WH Cabinet officials would read Chapters 10, 11 maybe on repeat.
Rating: 4.0-4.4 stars/5.0 stars.
September 1, 2026
An insightful (and sometimes terrifying) analysis of the current landscape of work.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews