Gig Workers during the COVID-19 Crisis in France: Financial Precarity and Mental Well-Being.

We set out to explore how precarious workers, particularly those employed in the gig economy, balance financial uncertainty, health risks, and mental well-being. We surveyed and interviewed precarious workers in France during the COVID-19 crisis, in March and April 2020. We oversampled gig economy workers, in particular in driving and food delivery occupations (hereafter drivers and bikers), residing in metropolitan areas.

Creative Destruction and Subjective Well-Being.

In this paper we analyze the relationship between turnover-driven growth and subjective wellbeing. Our model of innovation-led growth and unemployment predicts that: () the effect of creative destruction on expected individual welfare should be unambiguously positive if we control for unemployment, less so if we do not; () job creation has a positive and job destruction has a negative impact on wellbeing; () job destruction has a less negative impact in US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) within states with more generous unemployment insurance policies; () job creation has a more positive effect on individuals that are more forward-looking. The empirical analysis using cross-sectional MSA-level and individual-level data provide empirical support to these predictions.