How Newport County's blossoming gig economy was born from the Great Resignation

With unemployment lower than it had been prior to the pandemic, many experts have pointed to a general shift in talent from certain industries to other industries, dubbed the “Great Reshuffle” as the contributing cause of the tight labor market impacting many industries across the United States.

In Newport County, this shift has been most felt as workers move away from the food and tourism sectors and toward gig economy roles in professional services.

“We have seen less openings (recently), but some of that has to do with seasonality,” said Erin Donovan Boyle, executive director of the Greater Newport County Chamber of Commerce. “Generally, you can watch the graph and you’re always going to see higher openings in the April/May time frame because people are gearing up for the summer. It’s the longevity of the openings for the non-seasonal workers that is very interesting.”

The average employment for industries in Newport County dropped by 4,073 people between the third quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, most of which took place in Food and Accommodation Services and the Arts and Entertainment Industry, according to data from the RI Department of Labor and Training. The only two sectors identified by the RI DLT to see an increase in average employment in Newport County were in Utilities and in Professional and Technical Services.

“When it comes to how difficult it is to find employees, it truly is across the board, not just in hospitality and tourism,” Donovan Boyle said. “There’s legal services, attorneys, physicians, physical therapists, it’s across the board that there are longer-term openings than have traditionally been experienced. So, while of course, the hospitality and tourism industry was impacted because of the nature of the pandemic, the labor market was impacted across the board in different ways.”

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The Professional and Technical Services industry supersector, as defined by the North American Industry Classification System, covers jobs specializing in performing professional, scientific or technical work for others. The sector is an umbrella for a large range of positions such as legal advice and representation, web designers, bookkeepers, consultants, data scientists, and architects. It was the only industry supersector in Newport County to see consistent average employment growth from the fourth Quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021.

The supersector also encompasses a lot of jobs considered “gig economy” positions and many new businesses which have sprung up during the pandemic also fall into the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services category.

“You can see how things that support small businesses will continue to probably thrive because people can say ‘even though I can’t find anything now, I can still start this side business around things that support small businesses,’ and those smaller support-type roles can be businesses in and of themselves,” said Charise Wilson, owner and managing director for Rhode Island-based Workforce Ready Solutions LLC. “I have a lot of individuals come to me saying ‘I hate this job and I’ll start to look, I’ll get my resume together and ready to go, but at the same time I’m starting this side gig and it’s X, Y and Z.’”

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As a sector, the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services industry has a mean wage of $43.75 an hour, nearly $12 higher than the average salary in Rhode Island overall.

The number of businesses listed as “Professional, Scientific and Technical Services” in Newport County has also grown, with 140 more businesses classified under its umbrella by Quarter One of 2022 than it had at the same time last year.

Newport County had 664 businesses classified as a part of this industry supersector for the first quarter of 2022, the largest number of businesses in any supersector in Newport County, but only has the third largest average of employees at six workers per employer unit. For reference, Newport County’s largest supersector by number of employees, the Government supersector, employs about 84 workers per unit on average, but only listed 98 units for Quarter One in 2022, up by just three since the beginning of the last year. Additionally, the sector with the next largest number of businesses in Newport County, the Retail Trade, only added 24 businesses to its ranks between the beginnings of 2021 and 2022, and employs an average of nine workers per unit.

As a career coach and talent recruiter for individuals and businesses throughout R.I. and southeastern Massachusetts, Wilson said workers have given several reasons for changing their career path, many of which have been dissatisfaction with their current field.

“I think there’s a lot going on which is making the workforce a little more finicky and a little more hesitant before they commit to an employer,” Wilson said. “Some of those things are just getting through a pandemic and a lot of people are realizing they don’t want to settle and they have one life to live and they want to have the kind of career or job that they chose on their terms...People have definitely decided ‘if I’m going to go out there and I’m going to plug away for 40 or more hours a week, I want to do something that means something to me”

Wilson said there is also a generational difference between older and younger workers. Younger workers don’t feel loyalty to a specific field, making them more eager to participate in the gig economy.

“A lot of people have restructured their lives, they want a little more work-life balance, so if the employer isn’t malleable and flexible and willing to provide those types of things, it may be really difficult for hiring managers to find people,” Wilson said. “They can just leave. They can go off and find something else, they don’t have to put up with it."

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Newport County's employment sees shift to gig economy