The World Economic Forum, in a study on the ‘digital enterprise’, defines the motivation of employees in the digital age as follows: “Employees will likely still want security, predictability, and status, but in different forms and in a different context: one of learning, impact, and purpose. Security becomes less about lifelong employment and more about lifelong employability, achieved through the constant acquisition of new and relevant skill sets. Employees are not giving up predictability, but their timelines are shortening, and their willingness to experiment in different roles and functions is growing. And employees still want status, to some extent, in fair compensation, benefits, and rewards for outperformance.”

An NPR/Marist poll finds that 1 in 5 jobs in America is held by a worker under contract. Within a decade, contractors and freelancers could make up half of the global workforce, thereby fundamentally changing the supply and demand dynamics for knowledge work in an increasingly growing, open, and borderless marketplace. Already today, according to the Remote Work Report, “about three-quarters of knowledge workers would be willing to quit a job that didn’t allow remote working for one that did.” The decentralized global workforce, the so-called Human Cloud, is growing.

This transition will be characterized by intense labor arbitrage in the digital services sector, analogous in scale and significance to the Industrial Revolution during the 18th and 19th centuries.