The precariat is a neologism for a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which means existing without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. The term is a portmanteau merging precarious with proletariat.
Unlike the proletariat class of industrial workers in the 20th century who lacked their own means of production and hence sold their labour to live, members of the precariat are only partially involved in labour and must undertake extensive unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings. Classic examples of such unpaid activities include continually having to search for work (including preparing for and attending job interviews), as well as being expected to be perpetually responsive to calls for “gig” work (yet without being paid an actual wage for being “on call”).
The hallmark of the precariat class is the condition of lack of job security, including intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence.
– Precariat, Wikipedia.
We usually ascribe the ability of technology-first companies to disrupt existing industries to the fact that tech brings the marginal costs to service customers down to nearly zero. Tech-first companies can ‘scale’, get things done more efficiently: cheaper, faster, with fewer errors and people.
Another, darker side of many types of technology companies is that they externalise costs that were usually absorbed by more traditional companies.
These costs are often borne by employees themselves. This is more obvious in the ‘gig’ economy, where companies have fought hard to have their drivers, delivery persons and other roles classified as contractors so they wouldn’t be required by law to receive all the benefits employees were due. But this is also evident at several other tech companies, especially those that have moved to remote work (or were remote-first to begin with). Many companies have employees pay for their own computers, phone and equipment, internet, power, and their own home office while saving on rent, IT and utilities.
The precariat isn’t a consequence of the Tech age or tech companies. Its emergence and persistence are more than anything the symptoms of an inadequate welfare system which itself, as Wikipedia article suggests, is a result of “neoliberal capitalism”.
But it is also true that the very things that make some types of technology companies efficient and innovative are those that create precarious employment.