The Black Car Fund

By Yuki Noguchi,

Published January 29, 2018 at 12:46 PM MST

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

If you have a full-time job, and you get hurt at work, you are covered by workers' compensation insurance. You can get medical care, and get paid some of your salary while you recover from your injury.

But if you're a contractor — you're freelancer, working in the gig economy, and you get hurt on the job — you are out of luck.

A lot of the social safety net in this country works this way: it's built around full-time employees. But more and more people are working not as full-time employees, but as contractors.

This is problem people are talking about a lot. Today on the show, we talk about a possible solution.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

Subscribe to our show onApple Podcasts, PocketCasts and NPR One.

Business

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Yuki Noguchi

Yuki Noguchi is a correspondent on the Science Desk based out of NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. She started covering consumer health in the midst of the pandemic, reporting on everything from vaccination and racial inequities in access to health, to cancer care, obesity and mental health.

See stories by Yuki Noguchi

Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith