Even potato-chip tasters are temporary in the economy of 2026 — there’s nearly 57 million of these ‘disposable workers’

When I leave my Boston condo every day, I say good morning to the concierge, who works for a contracting company providing staff to residential buildings.

When I conduct an interview in a nearby building, the people who clean that office at night are contractors.

The person who serves me my lunch sandwich is a part-timer with no career prospects in that job.

When my best intentions to eat well are for naught and I gorge on Doritos, I remember that the tasters PepsiCo hires to test the chips’ addictiveness are contractors.

These are all examples of what I call “disposable jobs.” People who have them work at an employer’s site, but their employer makes no commitment to them regarding career prospects or job security.

My research shows that employers treat more than 1 in 3 U.S. workers as disposable .

That comes to just under 57 million full- or part-time workers out of the nation’s workforce of 162 million .

I am a labor economist .

In my new book, “ Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment ,” I explain why this is happening, what forms it takes, how common it is, what the consequences are for people and for society, and what can be done about it.

3 different varieties To learn more, I commissioned a nationally representative survey of over 6,000 people in late 2022.

I also interviewed nearly 100 workers, employers and policymakers.

I found that there are three categories of disposable workers.

1.

Contractors who are employed by a staffing firm but work at a client’s site.