Chicago that hasn’t
been acquired and
reopened by another
grocery chain. Not
coincidentally, South
Shore residents
travel an average of
2.9 miles to buy gro-
ceries, a greater dis-
tance than residents
of any other Chicago
neighborhood, ac-
cording to research
by the JPMorgan
Chase Institute.
That’s a mod-
est inconvenience
for upper-income
professionals. But
it’s been “the biggest
disruption to our
middle-class and
whose higher prices
eat into lean budgets.
A city commission
approved a $10 mil-
lion tax subsidy to
bring a retailer here,
but a deal remains elu-
sive. To local activists,
getting a grocer is an
existential necessity.
To nurture the middle
class, Free says, “you
need strong business
corridors.”
—Matt Heimerworking families,”
says Val Free of
the Neighborhood
Network Alliance, a
community devel-
opment group. A
six-mile roundtrip can
be a prohibitive time
suck for hourly-wage
earners, especially
if they’re juggling
childcare or depend-
ing on public transit.
So more households
shop at local bodegas,The Gig
Economy
Squeezes
Workers
BYJEFF JOHN ROBERTSFOR MILLIONSof Amer-
icans, work brings
income but none of the
secondary benefits—such
as health insurance, paid
holidays, or retirement
contributions—associ-
ated with employment.
Though many folks who
forgo benefits do so by
choice for the autonomy
and flexibility (and some
are able to plan for re-
tirement independently),
a recent McKinsey survey
of 162 million non-pay-
roll workers in the U.S.
and Europe classified
23 million as “reluctants,”
who would prefer to be
in the regular workforce
(26 million more were
characterized as “finan-
cially strapped”).
App-based gig em-
ployers like Uber and
TaskRabbit have helped
drive the ratio of payroll
workers to contract or
freelance workers from
8.3 to one in 1997 to six to
one today. This arrange-
ment often overlaps with
hardship. A 2018 study of
California gig-economy
workers conducted by the
Public Religion Research
Institute found thatGOING SOUTH
In Chicago’s South
Shore neighborhood,
residents have to
travel 2.9 miles on
average for groceries.PHOTOGRAPHBYJACOB YEUNG