This long profile of reasonably successful member of the precariat in the Times is worth reading, if you are curious about this trend.

“If you did the calculations, many of these people would be earning less than minimum wage,” says Dean Baker, an economist who is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “You are getting people to self-exploit in ways we have regulations in place to prevent.”

…

“These are not jobs, jobs that have any future, jobs that have the possibility of upgrading; this is contingent, arbitrary work,” says Stanley Aronowitz, director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Technology and Work at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “It might as well be called wage slavery in which all the cards are held, mediated by technology, by the employer, whether it is the intermediary company or the customer.”