But a rising share has been forced by low pay or redundancy into the informal jobs market. They account for all of jobs growth since the Great Recession. In the US, formal employment has shrunk by 0.1 per cent a year since the 2008 financial meltdown. All of America’s new jobs have been generated by independent work, which has risen by 7.8 per cent a year.65 The next time an economist boasts about America’s low unemployment rate, remember that number means something very different from what it used to.
