Influencers Are Here To Stay—Now It’s Time To Modernize Labor Laws
The Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments on the government’s TikTok ban next month, just days before it’s supposed to take effect. If the Supreme Court upholds the ban, many of the 100,000 independent workers who rely on TikTok as either a primary job or a side gig could face devastating economic consequences.
The term “influencer” may elicit eye rolls, but whether these content creators are sharing do-it-yourself tips or mental health advice or merely pictures of a recent lunch outing, the entrepreneurship and income involved are real. U.S. labor laws have not kept up with the changing environment of work, and as a result, nontraditional workers are especially vulnerable to labor market shocks. It’s time for reforms that incorporate the growing self-employed work force.
While influencing is a relatively new form of work, freelancing and self-employment have been features of the American labor force for decades. Estimates show around 60 million Americans engaged in traditional freelance jobs or gig work in 2022. Twenty-three percent of these gig workers made influencer-style content on a social media platform.
Independent workers face different risks than traditional employees. Workers whose primary source of income is independent contracting are frequently left out of employment-based benefits and protections. Laws that tie benefits like health insurance or retirement savings accounts to W-2 employment go back half a century, long before anyone could make millions off of 30-second dancing videos.
When these laws were created, restricting benefits in this way wasn’t a big issue because a larger majority of workers were traditional employees. But now our laws are failing a significant portion of the modern work force. State and federal policymakers can remove old-age barriers that restrict the flow of benefits to the independent work force.
In 2023, Utah passed a law that removed the presence of benefits in determining whether someone was an independent worker or a W-2 employee, which effectively allowed organizations to provide benefits to independent workers. As a result, Target’s delivery service Shipt launched a pilot benefits program in Utah earlier this year in partnership with the benefits company Stride. Just this month, Lyft announced it will run a pilot portable benefits pro
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