What The Gig Economy Says About The Broader Economy We recently wrote about Uber ( UBER ) and how the gig economy, as evidenced by Uber, is becoming increasingly reliant on "sub-prime" labor and venture capital to maintain a strategy founded on the pursuit of market share over profit. However, we see two problems with Uber's strategy. First, the money invested in Uber and the broader gig economy is largely unproductive from a long-term growth perspective as "gig" companies are using investor money for pricing subsidies and user growth instead of profit generation and value creation. The lack of profits will increasingly become a problem as many gig companies remain unable to deploy their parachute due to headwinds in the IPO market. Secondly, the broader gig economy is one of the driving forces behind an unsustainable US employment picture in which employment growth is fueled by low wage job creation made possible by gig companies and their venture capital subsidized pricing strategies.