Since acting Labor Commissioner Jarvis has not yet had his confirmation hearing, this was our first chance to hear him speak somewhat at length about this policy area.

We still don’t know what Governor Sherrill plans to do with the proposed rulemaking, but it’s fair to say after hearing Jarvis’ testimony that we do now have some insight into how the Sherrill administration might attempt to defend imposing what experts say would be the most restrictive anti-independent contractor regulatory language in the nation, creating an existential threat to the very concept of self-employment in my home state.

We also have an idea of how several powerful Democrats in the majority party plan to address—or not address—this policy problem as well.

The Case Law Argument

Republican state Senator Declan O’Scanlon—who has (thank goodness) sponsored a concurrent resolution that would invalidate the Labor Department’s proposed independent-contractor rule—asked acting Labor Commissioner Jarvis a pretty basic question about the proposal and the thousands of public comments filed in opposition to it.

Senator O’Scanlon requested an update on the status of the proposed rulemaking, and asked Jarvis whether he was open-minded, based on the widespread opposition, about changing the proposal.

That simple question resulted in some noticeable tap dancing.

First came a little jig by Committee Chairman Paul Sarlo, a Democrat who previously made clear in writing that he only wants to protect members of the financial services community from overly restrictive independent-contractor policy, and who seems to think it’s funny how New Jersey’s government kills women- and minority-owned small businesses with regulations.

Watch how Sarlo interjects after O’Scanlon asks Jarvis that very basic question about the rule proposal’s status, and about whether Jarvis is open-minded to changing the proposal. It appears as if Sarlo is reminding Jarvis of whatever they discussed prior to the hearing—like a director helping an actor remember his lines:

After that, acting Commissioner Jarvis answered Senator O’Scanlon’s question in ways that any subject-matter expert could have challenged, and in ways that belied what appears to be real concern about calls for New Jersey to abandon the ABC Test altogether, as the regulatory language becomes increasingly weaponized against legitimate independent contractors all across the nation.

Among other things, Jarvis claims that the proposed new rule is based on 90 years of case law—and then repeats, numerous times, that New Jersey’s Labor Department will be sticking with the ABC Test no matter what happens with regard to the proposed rulemaking:

Nobody at this hearing even asked Jarvis whether New Jersey’s Labor Department was considering abandoning the ABC Test regulatory language, though quite a few of us, including me, have urged the state to do just that. The fact that acting Commissioner Jarvis so forcefully defended keeping the ABC Test felt like listening to a Shakespearean character who gives away the real heart of the game: Jarvis doth protest too much, methinks.

As to the claim that 90 years of case law points toward codifying New Jersey’s proposed rule, I’m not a lawyer like acting Commissioner Jarvis is, but we’ve all seen these kinds of claims about case law end up falling apart again and again at the federal and state levels, for years now.

At the state level, in California, there were suggestions of judicial activism in forcing a weaponized version of the ABC Test into the law, as described by members of the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights:

“In 2018, the California Supreme Court decided Dynamex v. Superior Court, a classification case. None of the Dynamex parties proposed the adoption of a brand-new test for classification when the case was briefed or in the lower courts. Long after the case had been briefed, and just weeks before oral argument, the California Supreme Court invited the parties to submit letter briefs on whether it should adopt a new test. Less than three months after oral argument, the California Supreme Court, without prompting from the litigants, unilaterally and retroactively, imposed the ‘ABC Test’…”

Here in New Jersey, as I explained in my report “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism,” our state-level courts were swayed by Governor Murphy’s misclassification task force claims that included numerous instances of mischaracterized statistics and data. New Jersey’s courts were also swayed by the thinking of former federal Wage and Hour Administrator David Weil, who, my report details, has written for decades about independent contractors being a fundamental challenge to unionism, and who—much like New Jersey’s Labor Department is attempting today—tried to reinterpret existing regulatory language in ways that would restrict self-employment.

I wrote:

“The questionable Governor Murphy Task Force report that’s based on mischaracterized data and research, as well as the extremist thinking of David Weil, influenced New Jersey’s Supreme Court in a case about independent contractors—a case that the Labor Department then turned around and cited when proposing its independent-contractor rule in 2025.”

Combine those things happening in the California and New Jersey courts, and you realize that in two of the most active freelance-busting states, we have questionable rulings about regulatory language that seeks to restrict independent contracting.

On top of that, at the federal level, the U.S. Labor Department during the Biden administration noted that it could not impose the ABC Test through a regulatory rulemaking change without a U.S. Supreme Court ruling or an act of Congress. And when Congress, under Democratic Party control, tried to do just that with the Protecting the Right to Organize Act that would have injected California’s version of the ABC Test into federal labor law, several Democrats joined with Republicans to block it—citing concerns about legitimate independent contractors getting hurt.

Also at the federal level, the U.S. Labor Department under the first Trump administration explained in 2021 how its team reviewed case law in this policy area going back to 1975. That review, while not specifically about the ABC Test, found that while certain court rulings do lean one way or the other on employee classification based on a number of factors—meaning it’s possible to cherry-pick whatever regulatory language you want from various court cases going back decades—there was a “remarkably consistent trend” where in almost every case, if only two regulatory factors were the focus, then the court ruled the same way on proper classification almost every single time.

Those two factors are what’s known in layman’s terms as control and opportunity:

• Is the hiring entity exerting control over the individual, making the individual an employee, or is the individual free to work whenever, wherever and however she pleases, making her an independent contractor?

• Does the individual have the opportunity to earn more based on initiative or investment, with “no” meaning the individual is likely an employee, and “yes” meaning the individual is probably an independent contractor.

The U.S. Labor Department wrote in 2021:

“These two findings imply that whenever the control and opportunity factors both pointed to the same classification—whether employee or independent contractor—that was the court’s conclusion regarding the worker’s ultimate classification. In other words, the Department did not uncover a single court decision where the combined weight of the control and opportunity factors was outweighed by the other economic reality factors. In contrast, the classification supported by other economic reality factors was occasionally misaligned with the worker’s ultimate classification, particularly when the control factor, the opportunity factor, or both, favored a different classification.”

The currently proposed U.S. Labor Department rule would take the federal agency back to focusing primarily on those two core factors to determine independent-contractor status. So would legislation that’s currently before Congress, called the Modern Worker Empowerment Act.

These efforts, according to former U.S. Labor Commissioner Eugene Scalia and current U.S. Congressman Kevin Kiley, R-California, are direct responses to what we are enduring in states where, as Scalia wrote, “liberal activists and politicians have tried to drastically curtail the recognition of independent contractors.”

With all of that in mind, the testimony that New Jersey acting Labor Commissioner Jarvis gave, stating that New Jersey’s currently proposed independent-contractor rule is based on 90 years of case law, is well worth debating.

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Examples, Please

I was also pleased to see New Jersey state Senator O’Scanlon push acting Labor Commissioner Jarvis to provide evidence of people going to the Labor Department and claiming that they didn’t realize they were working as independent contractors.

Here is that exchange:

The reason I’m happy to see Senator O’Scanlon request this information is because we heard similar claims about the scope of employee misclassification out in California that either never were supported with evidence, or that have since been outright debunked.

Here in New Jersey, claims that Governor Murphy’s administration made repeatedly about the scope of employee misclassification have also failed to pan out.

And perhaps most important, according to all of the oral testimony and thousands of written public comments submitted to New Jersey’s Labor Department, there are zero people being unknowingly classified as independent contractors.

You can download and read here the eight (yes, only eight out of about 9,500) public comments that individuals supporting the proposed rule change filed. Not a single one of them says the person was unknowingly working as an independent contractor.

In fact, the vast majority of public comments and testimony that’s on the record from independent contractors is opposed to the rulemaking. You can read key passages from some of the more powerful comments in my “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report here.

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Senators Sarlo and Johnson

One of my biggest frustrations during all these years of fighting to stop freelance busting is that lawmakers often have no idea who independent contractors are and how we earn a living, or if they do, they simply pretend we don’t exist as they push forward with policy that threatens to destroy our livelihoods.

We have seen this problem repeat at the state and federal levels alike, and it was, unfortunately, on display again last week in New Jersey.

Example one: Watch as committee Chairman Sarlo and Acting Labor Commissioner Jarvis banter about how, in a state where an estimated 1.7 million people earn some or all of our income as independent contractors across hundreds of professions, the only people who might be legitimately self-employed are people who already have traditional jobs and then add side hustles to them:

This whole concept that Senator Sarlo articulates is utter nonsense. Tens of millions of Americans happily earn all or most of our income as independent contractors, without simultaneously holding down a traditional job. Quite a lot of us earn more than $100,000 a year this way, and fewer than 1 in 10 of us say we would prefer a traditional job.

Senator Sarlo’s mother’s handymen are not a representative sample of the New Jerseyans whose livelihoods are at stake with this independent-contractor rule.

Example two: Watch this exchange between Senator Gordon Johnson, a Democrat who also serves as chairman of the New Jersey Senate Labor Committee, and acting Labor Commissioner Jarvis:

Numerous things are frustrating about that exchange.

First is the fact that key representatives of the financial services industry and real-estate industry wrote extensive public comments explaining precisely how the proposed independent-contractor rule could harm them. Here’s a snippet from the public comment filed by Prudential Financial, as highlighted in my “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report:

“[T]he Proposed Rule, as drafted, will upend years of established law permitting independent contractors in the State of New Jersey, especially in highly regulated professional industries like insurance, financial services, and securities. Most importantly … we believe that such a significant change will negatively impact New Jersey consumers by severely limiting, if not eliminating, certain distribution channels through which consumers obtain advice and access insurance and investment products that provide critical financial protection.”

There are also well more than a thousand opposition comments from financial services professionals alone—a figure we know because the state Labor Department admitted that about 1,200 of their written public comments were initially omitted from the process altogether. And some of the most powerful speakers we all heard oppose the rule proposal in person at the public hearing last summer were independent contractors in the financial services industry, including this financial adviser:

After that public hearing, New Jersey’s Legislature passed a law to try and protect real-estate agents from this regulatory mess—a move that would not have been necessary if there was no problem with the proposed rulemaking. New Jersey state Senator Joe Pennachio, a Republican, noted in a press release that the intent of the new law was to let real-estate agents “keep their independence.”

Beyond that, Senator Johnson saying at the end of that video clip that he had heard from a few kinds of professionals—real-estate agents, financial planners and insurance agents—is probably true, but it’s far from the whole truth. He introduced legislation that would also protect certain kinds of truckers as independent contractors, yet another group that made its voice loudly heard at the public hearing and in the written public comments.

And, beyond that, I personally took a half day off work and drove more than an hour each way to meet with Senator Johnson and his staff at his office about all the many kinds of independent contractors who are caught up in this regulatory madness. I explained how California’s experience has taught us all that carveouts for favored industries with powerful lobbyists are not the answer. I also emailed Senator Johnson my “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report, which includes a list that grassroots advocates compiled of the more than 600 affected professions in California.

You may also recall my testimony before New Jersey’s Senate Labor Committee this past winter, when I looked Senator Johnson in the eye and said this:

How many times, and in how many ways, do we have to say these things before all of our elected and appointed officials will hear us?

I am deeply grateful to elected officials like Senator O’Scanlon who are listening to the people of New Jersey, treating all of us who are self-employed with respect, and trying to help us overcome these relentless, remorseless attacks against some of the most entrepreneurial people in our state.

It’s my hope that despite some of the things we heard at this committee hearing last week, rational thinking will ultimately prevail, and Governor Sherrill will abandon the proposed independent-contractor rule.

There is still time for our government here in New Jersey to do the right thing and be more accountable to the people it is supposed to serve.

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The 71-year-old Seinfeld has still got it, turning out belly-busters about things as commonplace as riding a Jet Ski and making a cup of tea. He’s a master of his craft who received a well-deserved standing ovation at the end of his set. There wasn’t a single fan still in a chair. Everyone was on their feet, cheering.

It’s odd, I know, to think about freelance busting in the context of a moment like that. And yet, I can’t help but realize how similar that moment felt to a recent video call I was on—a call with hundreds of participants that the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy organized to get feedback about the independent-contractor rule that the U.S. Department of Labor has proposed.

There might as well have been cheering at the end of that video call, too. It was yet another overwhelming display of support for a government effort to protect the business model of independent contracting.

Among hundreds of people who participated in that video call, only a few seemed less than enthusiastic about the direction the federal rule proposal is taking. And those few naysayers weren’t particularly memorable. They didn’t make compelling arguments. Their words were a whole lot of what Seinfeld fans know as the yada, yada, yada.

By contrast, supporters of the proposed rule were specific about what they liked in the federal regulatory language, and about what else they’d like to see to strengthen support for independent contractors even more.

It is simply undeniable at this point that when lawmakers or regulators try to restrict independent contractors, they face massive public pushback, but when they try to protect us, the crowd cheers—and wants more.

The Right Direction

I used my speaking time during the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy video call to draw attention to what’s happening right now in my home state of New Jersey. We could not be putting on a clearer demonstration here in the Garden State of just how disgusted the public has become with attempts to restrict our freedom to be our own bosses.

We have a proposed state-level rule for independent contractors here in New Jersey that comes from the opposite philosophy of what the federal Labor Department is trying to do. New Jersey’s Department of Labor & Workforce Development proposed a rule that attorneys say poses an existential threat to self-employment and would almost entirely eviscerate the ability to be an independent contractor.

That proposed New Jersey rule did not receive anything even remotely like the warm welcome that the federal proposal is enjoying. Instead, New Jersey’s proposal saw 3-to-1 opposition in testimony at the standing-room-only public hearing, followed by about 9,500 written comments being filed—with a staggering 99% of them opposed.

The contrast in these responses is as bright-line different as it gets. Regulatory language that restricts independent contracting is wildly unpopular. Regulatory language that protects and preserves this way of earning a living is what the public wants. (Need yet more convincing? See California’s Proposition 22 vote.)

What’s happening in New Jersey right now should give the U.S. Labor Department (and lawmakers everywhere) confidence that the direction we are seeing in federal rulemaking is what the public wants, what the business community wants, and what independent contractors want. Anyone who has spent recent years participating in these meetings and hearings knows this isn’t even a close call.

Policymakers who want to hear more directly from the public about this policy issue can take a look at my recent “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report. It amplifies the voices of all kinds of independent contractors and businesses who spoke out in New Jersey, and at the same time uses my state’s public comments to document just how ridiculous the arguments for trying to restrict independent contracting have become.

That report came out in February, and there’s already new material that I could add to it. Just a couple weeks ago, we saw yet more indefensible claims from the New Jersey AFL-CIO, which is brazenly still encouraging lawmakers here in my state to support regulatory language that threatens the incomes and careers of an estimated 1.7 million independent contractors.

We need laws and regulations that protect us from them. For that reason, I’m glad to see the U.S. Department of Labor moving in its current direction, and I hope that states like mine will correct course and begin to do the right thing soon, too. Targeting actual cases of employee misclassification is necessary. Trying to wipe out a way of earning a living that has existed since the day our nation was founded is not even remotely OK.

Our laws and regulations should be based on the principle that everyone is free to earn a living in whatever way works best for us.

Any and all arguments to the contrary are just more of the yada, yada, yada.

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And boy, ain’t that especially true in the workplace. When I was still a staff employee more than two decades ago, I was forced to tolerate every conceivable kind of jerk. There was the boss who only spoke to me on days when I wore miniskirts. The boss who bellowed at the top of his lungs for me to come to his office like a trained circus animal. The guys from the office who thought it was OK to put their hands on me when they were drunk at work functions I was required to attend.

One of my favorite things about being an independent contractor has always been the ability to choose who gets to be on my client roster, and who receives the reply email that says: “I’m sorry, but my schedule is full.” I choose the clients, eliminating the kinds of obnoxious behavior I was forced to endure as a staff employee.

That ability to choose who gets to be part of my day is a huge part of why I love being a freelancer. Being an independent contractor is the best way in the world to avoid horrible people at work.

So, I was happy to see this research from MBO Partners get a push over on X earlier this week. It says 92% of independent contractors report having either a lot of choice (53%) or some choice (39%) about the organizations they work with. This is up from 2019.

High-earning independent contractors (those with annual revenues of $100,000 or more) report even higher levels of choice, with 99% saying they have a lot of choice (58%) or some choice (41%) in clients.

Perhaps most important, the research also shows that 98% of independent contractors are either very satisfied (44%) or satisfied (54%) with their client relationships.

Compare that with how employees are feeling these days, according to Harvard Business Review:

“Everywhere you look, the data points in the same direction: People are miserable at work. One in five employees say their job hurts their mental health. Nearly a third of employees describe their workplace as isolated or impersonal, and over 40% report significant stress.”

It’s almost as if the nearly two-thirds of Americans who tell Gallup we’d prefer to be our own bosses actually mean it—and that most of us feel better when we actually make the leap and do it.

Add It to the List

The research from MBO Partners suggests a core reason why so many people report feeling happier and healthier as independent contractors.

A fair bit of other research also exists about the health benefits of being your own boss. There’s research into how, especially for women, it’s good for your heart health. And how it allows for a healthier work-life balance. And how it helps you feel more optimistic as well as more in control of your life. And how—again, especially for women—self-employment correlates to a lower risk of developing high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes compared to women who have a salary or work for wages.

Mental health improves with self-employment too, according to this research as well as this research about women, in particular, feeling less stress when we’re self-employed. And there’s this research about self-employed men and women alike saying their mental wellbeing improved.

I guess someone, somewhere needed all this research to understand that when you have the ability to kick jerks out of your life, you feel better.

Which leads me to one more notable finding in the MBO Partners research—a key insight that is important to understand when government agencies are developing regulatory language to determine who is a legal independent contractor, and who is not.

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‘Strategic, Lasting Relationships’

One of the challenges with freelance busting is that the people pushing this awful concept seem to think that having a lucrative business relationship with a client should equate to employee status.

I don’t know any independent contractors who believe this is true. When we find good clients—people who are easy to work with, people we get along with, people who respect us as much as we respect them, people who pay on time and pay well—we want to engage in repeat business with them. This desire is as natural as wanting to avoid jerks at work. It’s common sense. When we find people we like to work with, we want to keep working with them.

In the MBO Partners research, that sentiment showed up in this finding:

“Independent contractors prefer long-term partnerships with clients who offer career growth and ongoing opportunities. They also value firms that help them develop new skills: 88% consider learning opportunities either significant (49%) or important (39%), and 62% seek strategic, lasting relationships over one-time projects.”

Back in the old days, freelance writers used to call these kinds of strategic, lasting relationships “anchor clients.” You’d get on the radar of a few great magazines you really enjoyed working with, take on work from those same clients again and again, and have them as anchors for your freelancing business while you added other, smaller clients around them.

None of this has anything to do with being treated as an employee. You’re not under their control, and you’re free to work simultaneously with anyone else. It’s about developing long-term, mutually beneficial business relationships with good people.

But some regulators nowadays are trying to twist that kind of relationship into evidence that we’re not independent contractors at all.

Take the currently proposed (and widely opposed) independent-contractor rule in New Jersey, which says an independent contractor can be deemed an employee based on (among other things):

• The number of customers we have and the volume of business from each of those customers

• The amount of money we receive from the customer compared to the amount of money we receive from other customers in the same industry

Think about that. It could mean that if you’re a freelancer with a strong anchor client, then you could be deemed an employee because of a lucrative, strategic relationship.

Now, compare that kind of thinking to what the U.S. Department of Labor just proposed as a federal rule, focusing on these two core factors:

• The nature and degree of control over the work

• The worker’s opportunity for profit or loss based on initiative and/or investment

In simple layman’s terms, the federal rule proposal is suggesting that what matters most are things like who controls when, how and where we do the work, and whether we have the opportunity to take on other work from other clients.

There’s a lot more to these two rule proposals than these bits I shared above—I have oversimplified things to make a point. And that point is that when we think about these kinds of regulatory factors, philosophy matters. It should take into account what a lot of successful independent contractors are saying in the research.

Our regulations around independent contracting should be designed to stop actual cases of employee misclassification, not to reclassify independent contractors who have built mutually beneficial, lucrative business relationships with good clients.

At the end of the day, I’m with Andy Rooney: “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” My favorite clients are the ones who think it’s fantastic that I head out in the middle of every afternoon to walk my dog in the park. They know what I know: that when I feel better, I work better.

And that benefits us all.

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Let’s play a round:

1. In my work writing about the boating industry, I’ve been to the Galapagos Islands and Fiji two times each.

2. In my work writing about the dog industry, I’ve attended auctions where breeders and rescuers had bidding wars into the thousands of dollars for puppies.

3. In my work writing about the franchising industry, I’ve interviewed the CEOs of McDonald’s and Burger King.

Now, you guess which two of those statements are true, and which one is the lie.

That’s the fun version of this game based on a believable lie. The not-so-fun version happens all the time in the political world, where individuals or groups pushing various policies will make statements that sound an awful lot like they could be true, but that in reality are totally false.

These lies are most believable when they’re embedded around a single statement that actually is true, to lend them credibility.

Last week, in my home state, the New Jersey AFL-CIO demonstrated this technique in the following email, which went out to legislators statewide. The email is about the independent-contractor rule that the previous administration of Governor Phil Murphy proposed, and that the current administration of Governor Mikie Sherrill has rightfully now paused to reconsider:

In that email’s six paragraphs, I count four lies and one truth.

And the truth, when it comes to the proposed independent-contractor rule, is just as damning as the lies.

Lie Number One

Let’s start with paragraph two of the New Jersey AFL-CIO’s email, which claims that the state’s proposed independent-contractor rule doesn’t make new policy, but instead simply clarifies the ABC Test that’s used to determine independent-contractor status.

Here is the actual press release that the Murphy administration distributed when it put forward the rule proposal:

The term “new rules” appears a dozen times in the headline and body copy of the Murphy administration’s own press release. And right there in the first paragraph, as you can read for yourself, the press release makes clear that these “new rules” would “codify the NJDOL’s interpretation of the ABC Test for independent contractor status.”

That interpretation would, according to all kinds of experts, make new policy. It would go beyond the bounds of existing statute and case law; would redefine independent-contractor status throughout the state; would defy the will of the state Legislature; and would impose the most extreme and rigid independent-contractor policy in the nation, according to:

• Three of the most powerful Democrats in the New Jersey Senate

• The Democrat who serves as New Jersey Senate majority whip

• Numerous Republicans in the New Jersey Senate and Assembly, including these and these

• Various lawyers including this one and this one and this one and this one

• The New Jersey Business & Industry Association

• The New Jersey Chamber of Commerce

It would also risk undermining access to justice, according to the state’s Office of the Public Defender; jeopardize public safety by decimating the roadside assistance network, according to AAA; be potentially catastrophic for the Early Intervention System that helps infants and toddlers with disabilities, according to people who provide such services; risk children’s safety, according to the New Jersey Recreation and Park Association Public Affairs Committee; and create unworkable assumptions for nonprofits dealing with everything from mental-health issues to the arts, according to the New Jersey Center for Nonprofits.

Indeed, this is all different ways of describing some pretty horrible new policy.

And sadly, we’ve heard this variety of the believable lie in the Garden State before, back in 2019, when unionist and then-state Senate President Steve Sweeney proposed legislation that would have imposed California’s career-crushing version of the ABC Test on New Jerseyans, while claiming his bill was simply a codification of existing regulations.

That bill, which also faced enormous public opposition, rightfully failed to advance—even despite the New Jersey AFL-CIO pushing hard for it, too.

Lie Number Two

The second lie in the New Jersey AFL-CIO’s email to legislators is in paragraph three, which claims the proposed rule would provide clarity for the benefit of those of us who would be subjected to it.

Anyone who has read the proposed rule knows this is false. New Jersey’s Labor Department states outright that the factors it lays out to determine independent-contractor status would not be the only factors it may consider when determining whether someone is properly classified. The Department phrases this in various ways, with this being one example:

“Proposed new N.J.A.C. 12:11-1.5 would also state that the factors are not exhaustive and that the factors listed should not be used as a checklist.”

In other words, if this rule were implemented, none of us would have any way of knowing how to stay within its bounds, because the bounds would be undefined. We couldn’t go down a checklist of requirements and figure out whether we had satisfied them or not. Any random factors could be used to determine legal independent-contractor status. The Labor Department could use a Ouija Board, the fact that a groundhog sees its shadow, or a Polymarket wager to determine independent-contractor status, and it would still technically be within the proposed rule’s wording about stated factors being non-exhaustive.

That’s not providing clarity. It’s doing precisely the opposite.

As one attorney wrote: “The Proposed Rule will likely lead to needless litigation as it does not provide clarity, consistency, or an accurate, even-handed application of New Jersey legal principles to either traditional or modern work relationships that independent workers enter into with New Jersey businesses.”

Another attorney put it like this: “Almost only counts in horseshoes. In the law, likely counts for nothing. Businesses need clarity. … [W]hat certainty can any regulated party have that they are correctly applying the test?”

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Lie Number Three

Lie number three is in paragraph four of the New Jersey AFL-CIO’s email, which claims that the organization itself in no way opposes legitimate independent contractors.

The rest of the paragraph then conflates legitimate independent contractors with misclassified employees, calling us “these same workers.” It says that being a W-2 employee is no different from having the kind of flexibility that independent contractors enjoy, going so far as to say that the very idea of choice in how we achieve the flexibility we want in our lives is a false concept.

This paragraph in the New Jersey AFL-CIO’s email isn’t a one-off, either. It’s a variation on what the organization wrote in its public comment about the state’s proposed independent-contractor rule:

“Workers can perform the same exact jobs they currently are performing—including app-­based delivery and transportation services—when classified as an employee. There is no prohibition of a worker holding multiple part-time jobs with several companies, performing the same work they do as independent contractors, but filing a W-2 as an employee rather than a 1099 as an independent contractor.”

The New Jersey AFL-CIO is not demonstrating respect for independent contractors, or even basic comprehension of how we are different from part-time employees. Instead, the organization is trying to convince legislators that there’s no difference between being an independent contractor who has total control over her work, and an employee who has multiple bosses telling her what to do.

This is an utterly ridiculous claim on its face. Also ludicrous is the idea that companies will create traditional jobs for people currently working as independent contractors. The Labor Department’s own proposed rule states outright that it will not create any jobs—full-time, part-time or otherwise.

Just as we all saw happen in California with overly restrictive independent-contractor policy, the most likely outcome would be independent contractors losing the income and careers that we currently have, and that the vast majority of us wish to keep because we prefer to be independent contractors.

For us, the choice is quite real.

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Lie Number Four

The fourth lie in the New Jersey AFL-CIO’s email is in paragraph five, which states that because independent contractors fall outside the National Labor Relations Act, we have our right to join a union stripped away from us.

That’s not how rights work here in the United States of America.

We have lots of rights, which we may or may not be exercising at any given time. We have the right to free speech whether we choose to speak or not. We have the right to bear arms whether we choose to own a gun or not. We have the right to a speedy trial whether we are involved with the justice system or not.

When we choose to be independent contractors, we are not having our ability to be an employee and to join a union stripped away from us. We are choosing to exercise a different freedom: the freedom to go into business for ourselves, to be our own bosses, something that about two-thirds of Americans tell Gallup they would prefer to be. The ability to make this choice is a freedom that has existed since the day the United States was founded.

The essence of freelance busting is that unionists like the New Jersey AFL-CIO are trying to strip away our freedom to be self-employed, because if we are our own bosses, then they cannot unionize us. By law, they have to respect our choice and leave us alone.

Overly restrictive independent-contractor policy isn’t about granting new rights to us. It’s about granting new rights to union organizers who have become so detached from reality, they now call the business model of being our own bosses—a business model that has helped millions of entrepreneurial Americans to thrive—a danger to the nation’s future.

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The One Truth

Arguably the most damning part of the New Jersey AFL-CIO’s email is the one paragraph that’s entirely true. That’s the first paragraph, which states that several other unions—including LIUNA, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, the Health Professionals and Allied Employees, the Teamsters and the New Jersey Building and Construction Trades—all support the state’s proposed independent-contractor rule.

That’s accurate. Union organizers are the only real base of support for freelance busting here in New Jersey, with independent contractors ourselves, the broader business community and pretty much everyone else in the state standing 99% opposed among the estimated 9,500 written public comments on file.

In fact, at the public hearing in Trenton last summer, the only people who testified in favor of this proposed rule were either on a union payroll or affiliated with organizations that have strong union ties. That was the only support in the standing-room-only crowd of witnesses who testified for more than three hours straight, 3-to-1 in opposition. I noted the full list of these unionist witnesses in my testimony last year before the U.S. Senate HELP Committee, where I also said in my opening statement that what’s happening is not targeting employee misclassification. It’s weaponizing regulatory language to attack independent contractors.

We are supposed to have government of, by and for the people. Not government of, by and for the union organizers. New Jersey’s proposed rulemaking pits extremism against entrepreneurism, which is why the only way to support it is by playing games like Four Lies and a Truth.

Nobody should be playing this game. Ever. Not here in New Jersey, and not anywhere else, either.

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We discuss a number of things on this episode, including:

• The overwhelming 99% public opposition to New Jersey’s currently proposed independent-contractor rule

• The fact that some of the research and source material being used to push the proposed rule is highly questionable

• The way that overly restrictive independent-contractor policy disproportionately and negatively affects women, based on results that have already been documented in California and New Jersey alike

• What New Jersey’s public comments suggest is really going on in the construction industry (the big problem doesn’t actually appear to be employee misclassification)

• My 2025 testimony before the U.S. Senate about the need for our government to protect independent contractors everywhere from regulatory language that is being weaponized to harm us

• The way that more reasonable independent-contractor policy would tie directly into all the current concerns about affordability

• The very real opportunity that New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill has right now to put our state on a far better path, and to become a national leader in this policy area with a more reasonable approach than the previous administration

To view the whole episode with this segment and more, and to see additional episodes of “Minding Your Business,” check out the show’s home page here.

You can also follow the NJBIA on YouTube to catch all the latest episodes.

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Into this mix comes new research from the employment platform iHire, which surveyed 2,250 U.S. candidates across 57 industries this past January.

The survey results included this nugget:

“63.5% of workers who found freelance work appealing said the rising cost of living has influenced their interest in freelance or project-based work, and 51.4% said freelancing is ‘extremely important’ or ‘very important’ to their overall financial stability.”

Politicians who pontificate about affordability should be doing everything in their power to protect the freedom to be independent contractors. Just as we saw during the Great Recession and the pandemic, when times get tough, hardworking people turn to freelancing.

Play It on Repeat

Quite a few of the iHire research findings line up with results from other recent research—including the fact that most people who are freelancing are doing so by choice.

Contrary to the freelance-busting brigade’s claims that independent contractors are all a bunch of victims who need traditional jobs and unions, iHire found that flexibility (73.2%), remote work (71.3%) and the ability to strike a healthy work-life balance (60.5%) were the top three reasons respondents were drawn to freelance work. These findings line up with findings from:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: only 8.3% of independent contractors would prefer a full-time job

• MBO Partners: 63% say independent work is fully by choice

• Upwork: only 10% of freelancers want to return to traditional employment

• Soundings/Temple University: “Many freelancers choose this path to achieve a healthier work-life balance, seeking more sustainable work environments compared to traditional roles”

• Wripple: 90% of freelancers and 99% of companies that hire them reported being satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the work arrangements they have

• Fiverr: “Nearly 25% of Gen Z respondents now believe that freelancing is more stable than a traditional full-time job”

And lots more research that you can find here in a list that I regularly update with links to recent findings.

The new iHire survey also asked an interesting question about how people who are freelancing would describe themselves. Here’s what the respondents said:

Think about that chart the next time somebody tries to tell you that independent contracting is synonymous with being an Uber driver. Or the next time someone from a construction union says we have to restrict all kinds of independent contracting because there’s employee misclassification happening in the construction industry.

Independent-contractor policy affects us all, including millions of highly skilled professionals who should not have to fight for the freedom to continue earning a living.

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The Flexibility Argument

One other finding in the iHire research caught my eye, because it flies in the face of unionists’ false claims that traditional employees who report to a boss can have as much freedom and flexibility in their lives as people who are independent contractors.

Yet again this week, in fact, this claim turned up. The New Jersey AFL-CIO sent an e-mail to members of my state’s Legislature, claiming that independent contractors who are reclassified as employees “can easily be in compliance with the law and can still enjoy this flexibility as a W-2 earner (employee).”

Compare that (ridiculously laughable) claim to what is actually going on in the lives of freelancers that iHire surveyed. How many W-2 employees do you know who describe their work-life balance like this:

And I can tell you, as someone who has been a professional freelancer for two decades now, one of the benefits of being your own boss is being able to move in and out of those work-hour categories however you please. Work a little less one week, a little more one week—it’s entirely up to you as an independent contractor.

There is no boss in the world who can compare with having no boss at all. And freelancers know it, based on this bit in the iHire report:

“Our survey showed that the motivation behind freelancing isn’t necessarily money—it’s lifestyle. Specifically, flexibility (73.2%), remote work (71.3%), and the ability to strike a healthy work-life balance (60.5%) were the top three reasons respondents were drawn to freelance work, above earning supplemental income (53.1%) and making more money/higher pay (39.9%).”

Yet again, the research shows that most independent contractors are choosing self-employment. We’re doing it for a better life, for a better income. We’re striving to achieve affordability with flexibility.

Any politician who claims to value those things should be doing everything possible to stop the freelance busting we’ve been forced to endure for years now. Stand with us, not against us. Protect and preserve our freedom to choose independent contracting.

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And now, the freelance-busting brigade is hopping on that linguistic bandwagon, repeatedly and purposefully describing employee misclassification as yet another kind of fraud—“misclassification fraud”—that the State of Minnesota needs to address.

On March 5, a hearing was held before the Minnesota House of Representatives Committee on Workforce, Labor, and Economic Development Finance and Policy. The witness list for this hearing was heavily stacked against independent contractors, with the following individuals among those invited to testify:

• Lee Atakpu and Carin Mrotz from Minnesota’s Office of the Attorney General, which ran what experienced business leaders reportedly called a “sham task force” on employee misclassification—a task force whose SEIU member, when challenged by yours truly about the need to protect independent contractors from overly restrictive policymaking, said that union busting is real, but freelance busting is “bullshit”

• Kevin Pranis of LIUNA Minnesota and North Dakota, with LIUNA being among the unions pushing for harsh restrictions on independent contractors nationwide

• Ben Baglio of the Minnesota Nurses Association, who presented research by Katie J. Wells, a Ph.D. in the field of geography who testified before Congress that independent contractors should be reclassified as employees against their will

• Melissa Hysing of the AFL-CIO, a longtime and major driver of freelance busting nationwide

• Aaron Rosenthal of North Star Policy Action, a union-backed think tank whose founders include the Minnesota AFL-CIO, LIUNA Minnesota and IBEW Local 292 (the IBEW is also pushing freelance busting nationwide)

Indeed, this Minnesota hearing was yet another example of what I described in my recent “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report like this:

“Many of these same groups that descended upon New Jersey in 2025 had spent years issuing research reports, filing public comments and testifying against independent contracting not only in the Garden State, but also in other states and in Washington, D.C. They’re like a traveling road show from the days of the Old West, only instead of pushing snake oil as medicine for personal ailments, they often push mischaracterized data, antiquated research and limited anecdotes, urging policymakers to believe there is a problem of rampant employee misclassification, and then making widespread independent-contractor restrictions seem like the cure.”

The gang was all in Minnesota on March 5, where Atakpu kicked off the witness testimony by uttering the word “fraud” no less than a half dozen times in his first two minutes of being at the mic:

Now, to be sure, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard the term “misclassification fraud.” Groups like the Economic Policy Institute (whose chairwoman is the head of the AFL-CIO) have been using this term on occasion for years.

But what Atakpu did at this Minnesota hearing was different. The repetition of the term so many times, in so few minutes, was planned. You can see him reading from prepared notes. Repetition of this nature is a technique that is intended to frame a narrative.

Trust me: As a journalist, I’ve been interviewing people for more than 30 years. Atakpu’s repetitive testiomony is how it sounds when someone is trying to get me to write what they want, exactly the way they want it written.

To a layman—or, say, to a legislator who doesn’t know any better about attempts to impose overly restrictive independent-contractor policy that threatens our fundamental freedom to earn a living—“misclassification fraud” would be a whole lot easier to understand than “employee misclassification.”

And given everything else that’s going on with fraud in the State of Minnesota right now, it just might be the perfect time to try and attack independent contracting by using that particular language.

Notable Construction Detail

Another witness who included the word “fraud” numerous times in his testimony was Pranis, from LIUNA:

Interestingly, though, Pranis also said something that I haven’t heard before with regard to the construction industry.

He testified that employee misclassification is only a significant problem in specific segments of the construction industry, not across the industry as a whole:

That’s notable testimony coming out of Minnesota, especially when it’s paired with what we can see in the public comments that are now on file with New Jersey’s Department of Labor & Workforce Development. Those public comments, and their source material, reveal what I describe in my “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report like this:

“It is possible, based on underlying research from several public comments filed in support of the proposed rulemaking, that undocumented immigration is a key reason for this disconnect between a perceived misclassification problem and a more widespread, different problem that requires targeted focus in the construction industry. Per the aforementioned ICERES study, researchers commissioned by the carpenters and joiners union found that they could not distinguish between misclassified employees and off-the-books cash schemes. Significantly, those researchers strongly indicated that off-the-books schemes appeared to be the larger problem in construction. That finding matches underlying research from the supportive public comment filed by the nonprofit Dēmos, which documented a connection between undocumented immigrants, off-the-books cash schemes and construction.

“Indeed, even going back a quarter century to the federal ‘Planmatics’ report that numerous supportive public comments cited as underlying research, findings have noted a correlation between undocumented immigrants and construction-industry problems in New Jersey. That federal report specifically describes immigrants from Poland, Russia and other Eastern Bloc nations, as well as Hispanic immigrants, and their involvement in the Garden State’s construction-industry problems.”

If you combine Pranis’ testimony in Minnesota with information from New Jersey’s public comments, you can see a clear, possible path to targeted enforcement that regulators might want to consider in certain segments of the construction industry, specifically with an eye toward off-the-books cash schemes that involve undocumented immigrants.

That would seem to make a whole lot more sense than continuing down the path of trying to impose regulatory language so strict that attorneys say it now poses an existential threat to independent work of all kinds. Especially when everyone on all sides of this policy debate agrees that the vast majority of independent contractors across hundreds of professions aren’t misclassified at all.

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‘Over $8 Billion Each Year’

Yet another witness who incorporated the term “fraud” into his testimony was Rosenthal, from the union-backed think tank North Star Policy Action. And he packed a whole lot of the freelance-busting brigade’s other greatest hits into just a few short sentences, too.

His testimony made clear not only that the unionists are going to keep targeting independent contractors across all industries—including high-earning industries like finance—but also that the unionists are going to continue to claim that their estimates show misclassification is a problem that costs “billions” of dollars:

That’s a big claim, $8 billion each year. Especially since for years now, we’ve seen similar claims at the state and federal levels that didn’t pan out.

In California, as reported by Karen Anderson for The Coast News Group, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez said repeatedly while pushing anti-independent contractor policy that the State of California loses $7 billion a year in payroll tax revenues because of independent contractors. The Coast News Group reported:

“As it turns out, her claim is without evidence and has no basis in fact, according to William Hamm, managing director of Berkeley Research Group’s San Francisco Bay Area office. His team helped lead a study beginning in 2019 about the fiscal impact of independent contracting in California.

“‘Her claim is utter nonsense,’ said Hamm, former head of the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office in California. ‘Anyone who cites this $7 billion number is doing so knowing full well that it is completely bogus.’”

Similarly, in New Jersey, as I documented in my “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report, the former administration’s labor commissioner, Robert Asaro-Angelo, testified that “misclassification costs New Jersey billions of dollars in critical income tax and benefits contributions.”

There is strong evidence from Asaro-Angelo’s own Labor Department press releases, after years of focus on this policy area, that the figure is much smaller.

At the federal level, too, we have seen sitting lawmakers such as U.S. Representative Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, claim that misclassification is a problem that costs workers billions of dollars a year. But the Biden administration, after years of focusing on this purported wide-scale problem, didn’t find nearly that much. Instead, the amount the federal Department of Labor recovered was only about $41 million.

And notably, Congressman Scott’s claim was “nearly $4 billion” each year being lost to misclassification nationwide.

That’s only half of the $8 billion that Rosenthal just claimed is being lost in Minnesota alone.

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41% of Their Time

The last clip from the hearing that I’ll share here is one where Minnesota Rep. Isaac Schultz, a Republican, asked how many misclassification cases the Attorney General’s Office has actually handled, given the allegations about how widespread the nature of the problem is.

As you can see for yourself here, Atakpu didn’t answer the question. Instead, he testified that the Attorney General’s Office had spent 41% of its time on the issue of employee misclassification:

What did we learn in that exchange? That instead of focusing more resources on what has turned out to be widespread fraud in programs intended to feed schoolkids, as well as programs involving autism therapy, home health assistance and more, the Office of Minnesota’s Attorney General has been spending 41% of its time on targeting independent contracting.

One could argue that’s evidence of government priorities being misaligned with reality. We’re also seeing something like that here in my home state of New Jersey, where 99% of the public is opposed to what our state government is trying to do with independent-contractor policy.

Here in New Jersey, too, a lawmaker at a hearing questioned our then-Labor Commissioner about why so few cases of employee misclassification were actually being addressed after all the allegations that had been made about the widespread nature of the problem.

It’s enough to make a person wonder if some kind of fraud might be taking place.

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“African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism.”

His argument was that the very concept of Black people being free was an existential danger to the Southern United States. He was known as a Fire-Eater, a radical who materially contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War.

A little more than three decades later, in 1894, U.S. Senator Elihu Root of New York used similar language about needing to protect “the State” when arguing about the idea of women being free to vote. The following passage was part of an address that he gave before the New York Constitutional Convention:

“I am opposed to the granting of suffrage to women, because I believe that it would be a loss to women … and because I believe it would be an injury to the State.”

The dark side of American history is littered with the language of people who emphatically dismissed the nation’s core promise of liberty, people who believed that the idea of freedom should apply only to their preferred human beings, people whose words history has proved to be, quite simply, despicable.

And for generations, those who have sought to control others—whether because of race or gender or another distinction—have painted those perceived others in this specific way. They’ve framed the idea of the others’ freedom and equality as a danger to the State, to the nation.

Which brings us to what Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters union, said about independent contractors this week.

O’Brien, according to a post on the Teamsters handle on X, discussed the importance of “dismantling the corrupt independent contractor model” of doing business. Then—in a full-throated embrace of some of history’s ugliest language—O’Brien described our freedom to be our own bosses as a danger to the nation:

“Employers of all sizes and elected officials at all levels need to recognize how dangerous the independent contractor model is for the future of this country.”

Yes. Really.

What O’Brien said is akin to calling the Founding Fathers and their contemporaries a danger to the country. George Washington was self-employed as a land surveyor. Alexander Hamilton was his own boss, as an attorney. Paul Revere ran his own shop as a silversmith.

The freedom to be in business for ourselves has been legal since the day the United States was founded. Entrepreneurial opportunity has always been a core element of our nation’s fabric and success.

Today, millions of independent contractors earn more than $100,000 per year apiece. We work across hundreds of professions and contribute $1.8 trillion to the U.S. economy. Not even 1 in 10 of us say we would prefer a traditional job—while nearly two-thirds of Americans say they would prefer to be more like us, working as their own bosses. All across the political spectrum, the vast majority of Americans agree that government should allow people to be independent contractors. Democrats and Republicans alike say both political parties could be doing a whole lot more to demonstrate support for this particular freedom.

The United States of America doesn’t need protection from independent contracting. What we need is elected officials to protect independent contractors from freelance-busting extremists like Sean O’Brien.

Because frighteningly, he’s not alone.

Comparing Us to Criminals

Back in November, I published this piece about written comments filed by unionists and groups with strong union ties that are seeking to restrict independent contracting through a proposed rule in my home state of New Jersey. There are, thankfully, precious few written comments that take this side in the policy debate, just a couple dozen amid a staggering 9,500 or so comments that are 99% opposed to the proposed rulemaking.

In more than a few of those anti-independent contractor comments, there are questionable claims. As just a few examples, you’ve seen me write about them here and here and here.

But one of the footnoted sources in these public comments truly gave me pause. It was a citation for a 2024 book called Alt-Labor and the New Politics of Workers’ Rights by Daniel J. Galvin. That book includes a page with a chart that lists the different types of problems that alt-labor groups have identified, and are attempting to solve, by influencing employment law.

The list of identified problems goes right down a column, one after the next, like this:

• discrimination

• human trafficking

• child labor

• workplace violence

• independent contractors

That’s right: This 2024 book that’s cited as a source in New Jersey’s public comments, seeking to create a rule that attorneys say would almost entirely eviscerate the ability to be an independent contractor, equates being our own bosses with abusing children and assaulting people. It suggests that self-employment is on par with violent crime.

I hadn’t yet read that book when I testified before the U.S. Senate HELP Committee last summer about the need for our government to protect independent contractors from regulatory language that is being weaponized to attack us, and I hadn’t yet seen the words that Sean O’Brien uttered this week. But I had seen enough from the freelance busters by then to know that my opening statement on Capitol Hill needed to include this line:

Those words, sadly, ring even truer today.

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‘Extremism’ is Accurate

I thought for a long time about what title to put on the cover of the report that I just released based on New Jersey’s public comments. Sean O’Brien’s statement this week made clear that I chose the correct phrasing when I went with this:

What we are enduring is the antithesis of everything for which our nation is supposed to stand. Attempts to shut down the self-employment pathway to the American Dream are not mainstream. They are extreme. They fly in the face of who our Founding Fathers were 250 years ago, and who millions of us are today.

I urge you to read my new report, which details with more than 200 footnoted sources how what’s happening right now is not an unintended consequence of policymaking. The intent is to restrict independent contracting of all kinds, whether that’s what we want or not. The intent is to use the power of government against those of us that certain unionists define as others.

Corrupt.

Dangerous.

Call these words what they are in this context: extremism. The kind of extremism that always has been, and always will be, a threat to our most foundational freedoms.

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“I am here today because I believe that compliance with independent contractor standards in this country is nearly impossible. I am an expert. I know the [Fair Labor Standards Act]. I have reviewed every state independent contractor standard in the country. I have written an app that uses predictive analytics to provide a risk assessment of classifying a worker as an independent contractor. Believe me when I admit, even I cannot always tell you who is an employee and who is an independent contractor with certainty.”

McCutchen’s pointed testimony went on, a few paragraphs later, to add this section about what she says is required to fix a problem so significant that it opens the door to tyranny:

“The war on the independent workforce is perpetuated by the chaos of the legal standards for determining who is an employee and who is an independent contractor. By my last count, there are no less than 100 different federal and state statutes regulating independent contracting under at least six different types of employment and tax laws: wage and hour, workers’ compensation, equal employment opportunity, workplace safety, unemployment tax, and income tax. Not all the laws are totally different, but most have some differences, small or large. Also, both the federal government and many state governments have different standards in different statutes.

“Yes, a single person can be an employee under wage and hours law but an independent contractor under workers’ compensation law. A single person can be an employee in one state and an independent contractor in another.

“This chaos opens the door to abuse—even tyranny. Regulators can choose at will from a menu of different definitions, some broad, some narrow. This reduces predictability and opens the door to favoritism, ideological enmity, or even whimsy. The war will continue until that chaos is ended. Only Congress can do that.”

If you think things have gotten better since the day in April 2023 when McCutchen gave that testimony, think again.

There have been several hearings in Congress about the Modern Worker Empowerment Act, which Congressman Kevin Kiley, R-California, and Senator Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, sponsored to try and protect independent contractors nationwide from the kinds of chaos and income destruction we’ve seen with the enactment of California’s Assembly Bill 5. The Modern Worker Empowerment Act made it through committee and is awaiting a vote of the full U.S. House of Representatives, but it remains stalled in the U.S. Senate HELP Committee, where Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, has tried to be a voice of reason with a detailed white paper about why policy must ensure “that independent workers have access to critical benefits and the freedom to pursue a living in ways that work for them.”

Meanwhile, over at the White House, the U.S. Department of Labor—which faced five federal lawsuits over its last attempt to change independent-contractor rules—just proposed a new rule for determining independent-contractor status. Public comments are being filed about this rule proposal as we speak. Attorneys wrote pretty bluntly about the situation: “If you’re having a bit of déjà vu, we are too. This marks the third regulation on independent contractor status since 2021, and you might be dizzy from the back-and-forth changes.”

And at the state level, as if California’s freelance-busting debacle wasn’t already bad enough, regulators where I live in New Jersey have proposed what experts say would be the most extreme independent-contractor policy in the nation—so extreme that they say it poses an “existential threat” to independent work itself and would almost entirely eviscerate anyone’s ability to be an independent contractor at all.

To the many thousands of us who comprise New Jersey’s 99% public opposition to this proposed state-level rulemaking, the situation sure does feel like exactly the kind of “ideological enmity” that McCutchen described in her testimony before Congress.

Now, all of that recent history has become prologue to the press release that U.S. Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, issued last week announcing the 21st Century Worker Act.

This isn’t the first attempt to pass this bill. Senator Lee also introduced the 21st Century Worker Act in the 2023-24 session of Congress, which failed to advance the legislation.

Here’s how Senator Lee described his intent with the bill being introduced last week:

“Gig workers and independent contractors face too much red tape when starting a job. Employers are so scared of misclassifying their employees that they often give up altogether, leaving workers out of a job and our economy worse off. The 21st Century Worker Act cuts through the red tape to give workers and employers flexibility instead of a bureaucratic headache.”

Senator Lee’s press release left no doubt about where he stands on this policy issue, adding: “Current federal labor policy is complex and openly hostile to flexible work arrangements.”

It’s hard to say whether the 21st Century Worker Act will be the winning idea among the various federal attempts to fix the policy madness that independent contractors and the broader business community are being forced to endure.

But if nothing else, it’s nice to see yet another effort to stop the freelance busting that never should have been allowed to begin in the first place.

‘Freedom to Mutually Elect Worker Status’

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which advocates for limited government, was among the organizations promoting the 21st Century Worker Act right out of the gate last week.

I’m sure that attorneys can, and will, debate endlessly about whether this legislation’s proposed language would be better or worse than other proposed language to determine independent-contractor status. But one part of what CEI Research Fellow Sean Higgins wrote stands out to me by comparison with other options that are on the table:

“The bill would replace the current patchwork of conflicting standards under the Fair Labor Standards Act, National Labor Relations Act, and Internal Revenue Code with a single, clear bright line test for determining independent contractor status across federal labor and tax statutes. It also directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to assess the impact of these new standards and allows workers and businesses freedom to mutually elect worker status in cases where conventional classifications do not apply clearly.”

Senator Lee’s press release described that last bit—about the freedom to elect worker status separate from employee or independent-contractor designation—like this:

“Creates a third category for workers who do not cleanly meet the definition of an independent contractor or employee. It is impossible for the government to conceive of every possible work arrangement. This bill outlines a process for workers and businesses to mutually elect worker status in instances when a worker cannot be cleanly classified as either an independent contractor or an employee.

“If the business and its employee cannot agree on status, the worker will be classified as an independent contractor by default.”

If nothing else, that idea alone demonstrates a willingness to be rational about the changing nature of work, especially as artificial intelligence advances and threatens traditional jobs. This line of thinking is a whole lot better than what we’re enduring in states like California and New Jersey, which seem intent on restricting the independent-contracting pathway right out of existence.

The Great Recession taught us all that when conditions nosedive in the traditional job market, independent contracting skyrockets. People need flexibility to navigate whatever the world is throwing at us, to put food on our tables, to exercise our can-do instincts.

We are living through just such a time right now. It has never been more important for the pathway of independent contracting to be protected and preserved.

I fully agree with this part of what Karen Kerrigan, president and CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, stated in Senator Lee’s press release last week:

“For years, SBE Council has raised concerns about inconsistent and expansive federal interpretations that create confusion and expose small businesses and independent contractors to legal risk. These heavy-handed classification standards discourage legitimate contracting relationships and threaten the flexibility and autonomy that millions of Americans actively choose.”

The regulatory problem could not be any clearer. Ideas to solve it are plentiful.

What we need now is a path for Congress to pass legislation—ideally, in a way that protects the option of independent contracting at the state and federal levels alike.

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You can download and read the “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report here:

Final Extremism Entrepreneurism Feb 2026

1.67MB ∙ PDF file

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“Advocates for classifying more self-employed workers as employees are generally speaking on behalf of people who don’t want their help. Of the estimated 11.9 million Americans for whom independent contract work is their sole or main job, 80 percent prefer it to traditional employment, according to a 2023 survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“‘Gig economy’ workers, such as Uber or DoorDash drivers, dominate in the public imagination of what an independent contractor looks like. But that’s the minority. The industries or occupations in which independent contracting is most common include real estate, construction, arts, design and personal care. If someone does not want to be an independent contractor, there’s nothing stopping them from seeking full-time employment.”

Amen and hallelujah!

All kinds of independent contractors, and our defenders, have been making these same points for years—and especially trying to get lawmakers and press to understand that “independent contractor” is not a synonym for “Uber driver.”

The Washington Post Editorial Board clearly gets it. But frustratingly, last week’s coverage about the federal rule proposal also demonstrated that we still have a lot of work to do on the educational front, including with some other major media outlets that keep framing this policy issue around Uber and Lyft.

Here’s how Bloomberg Law framed the news with photography:

That story’s words also focused largely on app-based work, and suggested that making life easier for government investigators—not protecting everyone’s freedom to be our own bosses—was the core issue at play:

“Gig companies would have an easier time classifying workers as independent contractors under a new US Department of Labor proposal that seeks to expand a business-friendly standard from the first Trump era. …

“Regulatory attempts across administrations have drawn multiple lawsuits to block changes to a measure that would affect DOL investigations of industries such as construction and trucking, as well as app-based gig giants like Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc.”

The Wall Street Journal took a similarly misleading approach with its visual choice:

And that story’s words, as well, pushed the Uber narrative hard:

“The Labor Department proposed a rule to make it easier for employers to classify their workers as independent contractors, the latest salvo in a long-running tug of war between Democrats and Republicans over the status of gig workers. …

“The business models of companies such as Uber and DoorDash rely on regulations allowing them to maintain an arm’s length relationship with their workers.”

It’s been years now of independent contractors having to battle this false belief that we’re all a bunch of Uber drivers. Economist Liya Palagashvili called out this “gig economy” myth in 2023. I most recently wrote about the misleading Uber media narrative a month ago. Karen Anderson, the founder of Freelancers Against AB5 in California, compiled a list of more than 600 professions that freelance-busting legislation hit in that state.

Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley of California even read that list of affected professions on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. It took him a solid 10 minutes to get through them all, even speaking at a fast pace:

And yet, here we are, with some big media brands continuing to mislead readers about what’s really at stake with independent-contractor policy.

And Then, There Was This

Arguably the worst offender when it came to misleading readers last week was Politico. For years now, most Americans and app-based workers themselves have said their classification as independent contractors is correct. This fact has long been documented by respected organizations with no dog in the fight, such as Pew Research, as well as by industry-backed research.

And yet, Politico’s team framed the situation as some kind of newfound mass-messaging victory at the hands of corporate marketers:

I was pleased to see the Competitive Enterprise Institute call out this misleading narrative frame, writing this:

“The Politico report framed the results as part of a public relations war, describing the results as ‘a sign that gig employers are currently winning the messaging battle over how app-based workers are classified.’

“That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that the gig economy workers themselves are the catalyst here. After all, the polls show that app-based workers are more likely to support independent contractor status (88 percent), than the general public (76 percent), which includes people outside of the gig economy.

“In short, the support for app-based workers retaining independent contractor status declines only when you include people who don’t do it themselves. App-based workers want their freedom. Perhaps we should listen to them first?”

Heck yes, we should listen to them—and to the millions independent contractors who do things other than app-based work, too.

As I just detailed in my 98-page report “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism,” New Jersey’s Department of Labor & Workforce Development received an estimated 9,500 written comments about its proposed independent-contractor rule, which attorneys say poses an existential threat to independent work of all kinds. Only about two dozen comments—not even a full 1%—supported the idea, and almost none of those comments came from independent contractors.

Indeed, almost all the independent contractors who submitted public comments in New Jersey opposed restricting the freedom to be self-employed.

I noted in the report:

“[P]ublic comments make clear that the ultimate proposed rule in fact threatened the livelihoods of nearly all kinds of independent contractors, including attorneys, investment advisers, insurance producers, owner-operator truckers, licensed therapists, journalists and more.”

And yes, to echo what the Competitive Enterprise Institute published last week: New Jersey’s public comments make clear that independent contractors want our freedom. Lawmakers and policymakers should listen to us and rescind the state’s independent-contractor rule proposal.

I encourage everyone to share this new report with lawmakers and media all across the country, since it puts what’s happening in my home state into national and historical context. It details not only who is arguing against independent contracting, but also how extreme those arguments have become:

Final Extremism Entrepreneurism Feb 2026

1.67MB ∙ PDF file

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This policy issue isn’t primarily about Uber, no matter how many media outlets try to frame it that way. It’s about us all, and about whether we are going to allow our government to restrict our freedom to be entrepreneurial.

I sincerely hope to see media coverage—and policymaking—that is more reflective of this reality in the future.

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Today, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a proposed rule to determine employee versus independent-contractor status under the Fair Labor Standards Act and related federal laws.

According to the U.S. Labor Department’s press release, the proposed rule would rescind the department’s 2024 final rule addressing the classification of independent contractors and replace it with an analysis for employee classification similar to the one adopted by the department in 2021. Consistent with Supreme Court and federal circuit court precedent, the proposed rule would make it easier to properly differentiate between employees with the protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act and those workers who work as independent contractors.

“The tens of millions of Americans who work as independent contractors are helping drive the Golden Age of the American economy,” Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer stated in the press release. “The department’s proposed rule seeks to protect these workers’ entrepreneurial spirit and simplify compliance for American job creators navigating a modern workplace, all while maintaining robust protections for employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act.”

Public comments are invited on the proposed rule, which has a 60-day comment period that closes at 11:59 p.m. ET on April 28, 2026.

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Those written comments, along with in-person testimony from June 2025’s public hearing, are the basis of my new 98-page report, “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism.”

This report, which includes more than 200 footnoted sources, puts what’s happening in Trenton right now into historical and national context.

It documents just how extreme arguments have become in trying to justify independent-contractor policy that the vast majority of affected individuals, as well as members of the broader business community, rightfully oppose.

Inside the Report

“Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” details a pattern that has repeated for years now: A loose coalition of labor unions, alt-labor groups and union-friendly, multimillion-dollar nonprofits are moving from state to state, and throughout Washington, D.C., attempting to persuade policymakers that restrictive independent-contractor policy is necessary.

The “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report takes a deep dive not only into the public comments that New Jersey’s Labor Department received from such groups, but also the source material that underpins those comments. As the report notes, getting to the bottom of which claims are accurate in these comments sometimes requires combing through hundreds of pages of documents.

Ultimately, “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” challenges much of the research and data that is being used to target the business model of independent contracting in New Jersey—and, in some cases, all across the country.

This report also challenges research and data that the Murphy administration put forward as fact in New Jersey. The report recommends an inquest to detail the mischaracterized data and research in documents such as the Report of Gov. Murphy’s Task Force on Employee Misclassification, as well as to assess its impacts.

“Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” also highlights public-comment findings that suggest New Jersey’s approach to independent-contractor policy is already having a disproportionate and negative impact on women. These findings, the report notes, are similar to findings from California.

You can read and share the full “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report by downloading it here:

Final Extremism Entrepreneurism Feb 2026

1.67MB ∙ PDF file

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Overall, this report from my home state of New Jersey adds to what others are finding elsewhere: Claims about the widespread scope of employee misclassification are exaggerated. Such claims are based largely on mischaracterized data and studies; on research with heavy union bias; and on research with methodology so weak that it cannot distinguish between misclassified employees and wholly off-the-books schemes.

Urgent action is needed to protect entrepreneurs against this extreme type of policymaking, and to prevent future harm to our workforce, broader business community and economy.

Thank you to the attorneys at Pacific Legal Foundation, Littler Mendelson P.C. and Institute for the American Worker who reviewed parts or all of the “Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism” report pro bono. Thanks also to my fellow freelancers, including Jake Poinier and George V. Hulme, who generously donated their proofreading skills. Special thanks to Karen Anderson, founder of Freelancers Against AB5, for allowing me to include her list of 600-plus affected professions from California.

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To understand how far union membership has fallen in recent decades, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also noted that in 1983, the first year for which comparable data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1% and there were 17.7 million union members.

This drop in union membership is the biggest driver of freelance busting. It’s why unionists keep urging policymakers at the state and federal levels to try everything and anything they can think of to boost union membership. There is a real feeling of desperation among unionists right now, plain and simple.

Here’s what unionist Hamilton Nolan wrote yesterday after the new data dropped:

“Turning around this decades-long decline of union density is the labor movement’s most important task. If we do not do it, we will quite literally shrink down into utter irrelevance. We will fail at our central job: building power for working people. Giving workers unions—the tool that they can use to wield power on their own, without asking permission from anyone else—is the first job of all of us who consider ourselves a part of the labor movement. Union density under ten percent is a collective failure.”

Ideas that unionists are trying to turn around this collective failure include targeting independent contracting through all kinds of freelance busting. And yes, that includes attempts to reclassify huge swaths of independent contractors as unionizable employees, as unionists in Congress described in detail several years ago.

The nearly two-thirds of Americans who would prefer to be our own bosses need protection from this encroachment on our freedom to choose self-employment. So do the vast majority of us who are already independent contractors and wish to remain so.

It’s beyond frustrating that the help we need may be a long time coming, especially at the federal level. Experts recently gathered to discuss the reality of the situation in Congress during an hourlong Federalist Society panel, where they minced no words about why the challenges in Washington, D.C., persist.

Tribes Won’t Give an Inch

The whole hour of this new Federalist Society panel is well worth watching, in my opinion, but I think the following three short clips really put into perspective what we are all up against as we try to get independent-contractor policy to advance in Congress right now.

In this first clip, moderator Alex MacDonald of Littler Mendelson P.C. and panelist G. Roger King of CHRO Association talk about the big-picture reasons why Congress is struggling to pass labor legislation. King describes what’s happening in the House of Representatives and in the U.S. Senate as an “absolute stalemate”:

I can say, based on the three times that I’ve testified before Congress about independent-contractor policy since 2023, King’s description of a “stalemate” is spot on. It’s practically a given, heading into every hearing, that Republicans will almost all be on one side of the issue while Democrats will almost all be on the other side. The entire exercise of having hearings about independent-contractor policy simply exposes this deep divide again and again.

In this second clip from the Federalist Society panel, Thomas Beck of Littler Mendelson P.C. says he believes labor policy has now become as controversial as abortion or transgender policy in Washington, D.C.:

The bit where he talked about having to go through multiple cycles of Congress—meaning a multiyear effort—before the situation changes is also something I’ve heard on Capitol Hill with regard to independent-contractor policy specifically. I’ve heard it not only from lobbyists and attorneys, but also from top aides to committee chairmen who are just as frustrated as all the rest of us about the current state of affairs.

In this final clip, F. Vincent Vernuccio of the Institute for the American Worker talks about how hard it is to get even simple labor bills through Congress right now—including bills where there seems to be agreement on both sides of the political aisle:

Put all of this expert analysis together, and it’s evident that independent-contractor policy isn’t getting resolved anytime soon. Ours is not a simple policy issue with largely bipartisan agreement. It’s a complex policy issue that’s fully immersed in the tribal swamp.

That’s even truer today than it was yesterday, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics releasing the latest union-membership figures. Dominic Pino, a Washington Post opinion writer, broke down the new data last night in a thread over on X.

Try to imagine the level of desperation that unionists feel as they, too, look at figures like these:

Actually, we don’t have to imagine how the unionists feel. Nolan stated it vividly in his Substack yesterday:

“We are in a fight. And we are losing. … We can either do things differently, or continue to get our asses kicked.”

The AFL-CIO used the occasion of the data drop to yet again urge lawmakers to pass legislation that would spread California’s disastrous freelance-busting language nationwide:

“We call on Congress to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act…”

This is what the Federalist Society panelists meant when they talked about tribes being dug in for the long haul. And it’s nothing new: Quite a few unionists have been howling for a while now that their membership numbers have dropped so low, the unions themselves are facing an existential threat unless something significant changes.

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‘Deeply Undesirable’

Unionists have been writing for years about how the current system of unionization that worked for them after the Great Depression is no longer working. Here’s how labor organizer Stephen Lerner put it about a year ago, writing for In These Times:

“Our goal can’t be to just limit the damage, slow the hemorrhaging and hope the Democrats get elected in 2026 so we can return to the slow and steady decline that labor has long faced under both parties. After all, labor continued to lose density under Biden with the most aggressively pro-union labor board in recent history. Returning to the status quo is both impossible and deeply undesirable. We can’t fall into the trap of defending a failed system; we need to articulate a vision of a country and world worth fighting for.”

The problem with that last bit is that this vision coming from the unionists now includes proposing legislation and regulations that target independent contractors in ways that experts say would “substantially unravel and change large segments of the U.S. economy” and that pose an “existential threat” to the idea of independent work itself.

Which, of course, is such an extreme approach to policy that it forces independent contractors and the business community to dig in our heels against the unionists. It is quite the heavy lift to try and find common ground with people who are so desperate to save their own skins, they’re willing to destroy yours.

Like the man said, “absolute stalemate.”

The upshot of all this is that the powerful forces driving freelance busting are unfortunately not going away anytime soon. That’s the bad news that yesterday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics data amplified.

But the good news is that our widespread resistance to freelance busting isn’t going anywhere either—and it’s only growing with every year that this policy mess remains.

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This petition is signed by attorneys Alex MacDonald and Jim Paretti from the Workplace Policy Institute at Littler Mendelson P.C. It’s the same firm that donated its services pro bono several years ago to help my fellow freelancers and I file an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The petition they filed on behalf of the industry groups last week opens with a description of the status quo that sure feels spot on to me:

“The law of independent contracting is at a crossroads. After decades of steady and consistent application, the Board has gyrated in recent years between wildly different approaches. In some cases, it has applied a historical test grounded in the statutory text and judicial precedent. But in others, it has deployed a freewheeling analysis aimed at expanding coverage beyond the NLRA’s historical moorings. These shifts have increasingly brought it into conflict with Congress, the courts, and even its own administration. The time for these shifts is over: the Board should adopt a rule.”

The petition goes on to detail just how confusing some of these shifts have been:

“In less than two decades, the Board has articulated at least four different standards. It has frequently reversed course on the role entrepreneurialism, and the opportunity for profit or loss, plays in the equation. As discussed below, in a series of decisions beginning in 2007, the Board has emphasized, de-emphasized, re-emphasized, and again deemphasized what the D.C. Circuit has determined to be ‘the animating principle’ of the analysis—entrepreneurial opportunity. The result has been confusion: workers and businesses cannot know how the Board will classify their relationship. Without a stable test, they cannot plan and structure their businesses to comply with the law—a law the Board has made a moving target.”

That’s the petition’s setup for why the industry coalition is urging the National Labor Relations Board to undertake rulemaking now.

This petition also lays out a suggested rule that the coalition would like to see the Board consider when determining independent-contractor status under the National Labor Relations Act.

The Suggested Rule

The petition suggests the following rule:

“(a) In determining whether an individual is an employee or independent contractor within the meaning of Section 2(3) of the National Labor Relations Act, the Board will examine, among others, the following factors:

(1) the extent of control which, by the agreement, the master may exercise over the details of the work;

(2) whether or not the one employed is engaged in a distinct occupation or business;

(3) the kind of occupation, with reference to whether, in the locality, the work is usually done under the direction of the employer or by a specialist without supervision;

(4) the skill required in the particular occupation;

(5) whether the employer or the workman supplies the instrumentalities, tools, and the place of work for the person doing the work;

(6) the length of time for which the person is employed;

(7) the method of payment, whether by the time or by the job;

(8) whether or not the work is a part of the regular business of the employer;

(9) whether or not the parties believe they are creating the relation of master and servant; and

(10) whether the principal is or is not in business.

(b) In examining these factors, the Board will assess and weigh all incidents of the relationship in light of common-law agency principles with no one factor being decisive or given undue weight. In evaluating the significance of the foregoing agency factors, the Board will assess the effect of each of the factors on an individual’s opportunity for profit or loss.

(c) In determining whether an individual is an independent contractor or an employee, the Board will give no weight to:

(1) steps taken to apply with legal or regulatory requirements;

(2) an individual’s failure to exercise entrepreneurial opportunities available to the individual;

(3) reasonable safeguards adopted to protect the health or safety of the individual or other individuals or to prevent damage to property;

(4) constraints imposed by customer demands.

(d) When determining whether an individual is an independent contractor or an employee, the Board will permit parties to present evidence on the typical circumstances of individuals in substantially similar roles to evaluate the circumstances typical of those roles and need not limit its consideration to circumstances specific to the single individual.”

The petition argues that such a rule would restore the certainty and clarity provided by application of the common-law test as set forth in the Board’s decision in SuperShuttle.

It also states that the rule would better align with judicial precedent and the current administration’s views.

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Since then, Palagashvili and her team have documented the harms of overly restrictive independent-contractor policy in California, New Jersey and beyond. Her work in this area, specific to ABC Test regulatory language, is groundbreaking. She’s a math-brain superhero to freelance writers like me.

Last week, Palagashvili published an article titled “AI, Transaction Costs, and a Quiet Shift Toward Self‑Employment.” It raises some interesting questions about whether the rise of artificial intelligence might affect independent-contractor policymaking going forward.

She writes:

“Something that strikes me in much of the AI‑and‑work debate is how narrowly it is framed. The dominant question tends to be whether AI will replace workers in existing jobs, and if so, in which ones. Even the more nuanced task-based approaches focus primarily on which tasks AI can perform. What gets far less attention is whether AI changes how work is organized in the first place.

“From an economic perspective, that omission matters. Technological change doesn’t just substitute capital for labor—it also reshapes the boundary between firms and markets. And on that margin, AI may be exerting a transaction‑cost shock that quietly expands self‑employment and contract‑based work across a much wider set of occupations than we usually associate with the ‘gig economy.’”

Think about that idea for a hot minute. Palagashvili is writing about the concept of expanding self-employment even further at a time when we are already experiencing a years-long policymaking clash that’s rooted in the expansion of self-employment.

On one side of this policy clash are unionists who are desperate to prop up their dying business model—which depends on keeping as much of the workforce as possible in traditional, unionizable jobs. These unionists have been attempting to use government force to change policy in ways so extreme that attorneys say the ideas now pose an existential threat to self-employment itself.

On the other side of this policy clash are independent contractors, the vast majority of whom prefer to remain self-employed. Our numbers only keep rising in a nation where most people would prefer to be our own bosses, and where a growing number of people are working for ourselves with tools such as laptop computers, smartphones, Wi-Fi and increasingly sophisticated software.

Understanding the existing policy fight in that technological context makes it easy to see how AI’s acceleration might also accelerate the current policy clash.

I never thought about AI this way until I read Palagashvili’s article last week, but it is indeed possible that the advancement of artificial intelligence could help advance the fight to stop freelance busting.

How Quaint

Liya Palagashvili and I were both back before the U.S. House of Representatives last year. We testified together again on the side of independent contractors, at a hearing where we sat across from Democratic Representative Mark Takano of California.

Instead of internalizing what we were testifying about, Takano clung to his beliefs about the good, unionized manufacturing jobs of the 1950s. He also made sure to throw in a reference to Uber, which, as noted yet again in an article that I published last week, has precious little to do with most independent contractors.

Watch for yourself as this sitting member of Congress takes a long-winded road through rideshare to try and justify his beliefs that most independent contractors would rather be unionizable employees:

Takano’s statements are demonstrably false—nobody is saying that everyone will be forced to become an independent contractor in the United States—and his claims are going to seem as quaint as a crocheted blanket if AI technology does, in fact, allow more Americans to follow their dreams and become their own bosses.

Many of the things Representative Takano described as being, in his mind, tied to unionizable employee status—good income, safe working conditions—are already things independent contractors achieve every single day. Millions of self-employed people now earn more than $100,000 a year, and it doesn’t get much safer than working from wherever you want, whenever you please.

By contrast, one benefit of having a traditional job—easier access to group-rate health insurance—does remain problematic for independent contractors. But that’s a health-insurance policy problem, not a worker-classification policy problem. As I testified before the U.S. Senate last year, a lot of us who are getting soaked with high premiums and deductibles are eager for Congress to pass legislation that would correct that equal-access problem:

Palagashvili, who has also been a leader in trying to move the needle on this health-insurance policy problem, wrote about this very point in her article last week, adding the wrinkle of how AI acceleration could become a factor in those policy discussions as well:

“The portable benefits conversation has moved from think tank papers to actual pilots and federal proposals. That momentum reflects a growing recognition: safety nets built around W-2 employment don’t work well when work happens across multiple clients and projects. If this AI-driven reorganization accelerates, the mismatch between how we organize social insurance and how work actually gets done will only widen.”

If you think about it, Takano and Palagashvili are essentially saying the same thing: Far too many of our labor and employment policies are built for the workforce of the 1950s, and something has to change.

But only Palagashvili is saying it in the same way that the vast majority of Americans—Democrats and Republicans alike—are saying it. While Takano is arguing that we have to force people back into the kinds of traditional union jobs that existed in the 1950s, most Americans today are instead saying that lawmakers in both political parties could be doing a whole lot more to support for our desire to be our own bosses.

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A Final Thought

Palagashvili’s thought-provoking article from last week ends with this:

“The conversation needs to expand beyond ‘will AI take my job?’ to ‘how will AI reorganize how we work?’ That question will shape not just labor markets but social insurance, labor regulation, and economic measurement for the economy we’re building.”

I’ve been a freelance writer and editor, by choice, since 2003. For the past 23 years, my available freelance work and opportunities have only expanded as the Internet and technology have advanced—because I have made an effort to learn everything from basic HTML code to search-engine optimization and social-media techniques, to ensure that my fundamental writing and editing skills remain marketable in the changing media landscape.

Yes, like just about every freelancer I know in publishing, I have clients right now who are trying to cut overhead by increasing the use of AI. However, these clients are quickly realizing that you need smart humans in the loop if you want your content to stand out amid all the AI-generated junk. If past is prologue, then those of us who naturally think about using technology to do things more creatively and efficiently are going to survive the rise of AI, too.

Palagashvili’s ideas, once again, seem to be in alignment with my lived experience. She writes about AI making it possible for freelancers to provide even better services to our clients. She’s correct about this:

“An independent consultant can now produce client-ready reports with AI assistance for data visualization, editing, and formatting, which previously required support staff at a consulting firm. A policy researcher who once needed a think tank’s editorial review, design staff, and institutional publication channels can now use AI tools for editing and professional formatting, while publishing directly through Substack or personal websites reaches audiences without institutional backing.”

The Substack you’re reading right now—not to mention the Substack where she published her article—are proof that this is all true. So is the image at the top of this article. I created it using Substack’s built-in AI image generator. And I distributed it to you by pressing a button, without institutional backing of any kind.

Think for yourself about whether someone pining for the manufacturing jobs of the 1950s is more likely to succeed than someone who thinks like Palagashvili and I do, as our society barrels technologically toward the year 2050.

In the end, policymakers trying to force all of us back to the past may have no choice but to accept reality and fully support our freedom to choose independent contracting.

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Again and again, year after year, headlines cite only rideshare. In reality, legislation and regulations target independent contractors of all kinds.

This problem of overblown association is so bad that when I, along with three other freelance writers, wrote an op-ed about how we had just sued the U.S. Labor Department, we had to ask The Hill to change the photo. Our op-ed does not even include the word “rideshare,” and yet, this was the original layout the publication instinctively put online:

We had to ask for the image to be updated, so that it actually reflected who we are—a bunch of women freelance writers.

This is what you see online today when you call up that op-ed:

Hits the eye a lot differently, doesn’t it?

Everybody knows, because of what happened in California with Assembly Bill 5, that independent contractors in more than 600 professions got hit by that state’s overly restrictive independent-contractor policy. Economist Liya Palagashvili, who specializes in this area, has documented that gig workers amount to less than 10 percent of the overall independent contractor workforce. Fiverr recently put out a research report about independent contractors who work in creative services (artists, video producers), skilled technical services (architecture, computers) and skilled professional services (legal, accounting, marketing). Upwork found that more than one in four (28%) knowledge workers in the U.S. is working freelance.

Now comes yet another analysis, this one from FlexJobs, titled the 2026 State of Remote Freelance Jobs Report. It covers job postings from more than 60,000 companies across 60 career categories between July 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025, highlighting the top freelance jobs, career industries and companies by growth.

By now, it should come as no big surprise to anyone that the word “rideshare” doesn’t appear anywhere in this analysis, either.

When you think about independent-contractor policy, think about these categories instead.

Fastest-Growing Types of Freelancing

According to the FlexJobs analysis, these are the top 10 categories of freelancing that are experiencing the most growth, from highest to lowest:

The report goes into more detail about some of these categories, stating this:

“Freelance demand grew sharply across several career areas in the second half of 2025. In FlexJobs’ database, freelance job postings in bilingual, customer service and banking categories nearly doubled during this period.

“At the same time, remote freelance jobs in communications, sales, and medical and health fields grew by 30% or more. Business development, engineering, legal and education jobs posted steady increases of roughly 20% or higher.”

The most in-demand job titles for freelancers, according to this analysis, are as follows:

• Customer Service Representative

• Nurse

• Project Manager

• Business Analyst

• Mental Health Therapist

• Translator

• Data Engineer

• Graphic Designer

• Software Engineer

• Recruiter

Say it with me now, for the people in the back who still can’t seem to make the mental leap: Rideshare appears nowhere in these lists.

Uber and Lyft drivers are not representative of independent contracting on the whole, no matter how often the Powers that Be try to convince everyone of the opposite.

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As reported by New Jersey Business magazine, Governor Sherrill talked about a number of problems she wants to address, including burdensome regulations that make it hard to operate a business in the Garden State.

“We rank 49th in the country as far as business friendliness, and that is not acceptable. … What I hear, again and again, particularly from the business community, is that, in many cases, it is just too hard to do business here. … [We need] to make our cabinet and the different departments work together better, to come together and serve all of you better.”

All of that sounds great—but those of us who live and work in New Jersey have heard similar promises many times before. Sherrill’s predecessor, Governor Phil Murphy, also promised to address things like the state’s high cost of living. Then his administration proposed an independent-contractor rule that attorneys say would make it all but impossible for a lot of us to earn a living in New Jersey at all.

Words are promises. What we need is action.

And in the area of independent-contractor policy, we need a specific action from the Sherrill administration right now: Please, rescind the proposed independent-contractor rule at New Jersey’s Department of Labor & Workforce Development.

Let Us Count the Ways

When Governor Sherrill announced a 90-day pause on rulemaking, she said the reason was to ensure that rules our government imposes will make life easier and more affordable.

The proposed independent-contractor rule does the opposite. It quite literally represents the antithesis of the values she says will guide her administration.

Here’s a look at why.

Making it easier to operate a business

The proposed independent-contractor rule actually goes against this concept in not just one, but two different ways.

First, attorneys say it almost entirely eviscerates the ability to establish independent-contractor status—which means larger businesses looking to hire self-employed people won’t be able to do so without risking government fines. Talk about a way to cripple business growth. Among over 400 publicly traded U.S. organizations, those in the top 25% of year-over-year revenue growth are more likely to embed freelancers (45%) into their workforce strategies. If you want to tank business growth, then limiting the ability to work with independent contractors is a surefire way to do it.

Second, attorneys say the proposed rule poses an existential threat to the individuals who are doing business as independent contractors. That’s people like me—the smallest of small-business owners—whose income would be wiped out if our government makes our existing business relationships illegal. We’d have to move out of the state to keep those business relationships intact.

Destroying all of these business relationships is not making it easier to operate a business of any kind. For independent contractors, it’s the rulemaking equivalent of shutting down an entire entrepreneurial pathway to achieve the American dream.

Making life easier and more affordable

It’s hard to conceive of any way that life would be easier if my own government wiped out all my business relationships in one regulatory swoop.

I also can’t think of a single way that my life would become more affordable if I suddenly had no income.

You’re no doubt laughing after reading those sentences. Yes, the situation is that ridiculous. It is beyond ludicrous for our elected officials to say they care about making life easier and more affordable if they impose a rule that attorneys say will make it impossible for many us to earn a living at all.

Making government accountable

There are about 9,500 written public comments on file about New Jersey’s proposed independent-contractor rule, with 99% of them opposed to the rulemaking. And those comments were filed after a public hearing where testimony was 3-to-1 against the proposal.

It would be hard to conceive of a more clear-cut case of government doing the opposite of what the people want. From musicians to therapists to tow truck operators, countless New Jerseyans have raised our voices and told our government to stop this insanity.

A government that is accountable to the people of New Jersey would have rescinded the proposed independent-contractor rule a long time ago.

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The Announcement

On Friday, Governor Sherrill announced the nomination of Kevin Jarvis to serve as New Jersey’s next labor commissioner. I was encouraged that the press release didn’t include the word “misclassification.” That word would have signaled continued hostility toward the business practice of independent contracting in our state.

Instead, Sherrill stated in the release:

“As we look to create more opportunities for New Jerseyans to find great jobs and get ahead, Kevin’s experience will be invaluable in helping us strengthen resources available to our communities.”

For his own part, Jarvis stated in the release:

“New Jersey is the epicenter of innovation, and I look forward to working with Governor Sherrill to cultivate a workforce ready to respond to our evolving employment landscape.”

That language could be read in any number of ways, but there is absolutely room in there to give independent contractors some hope that the new administration may be better than the last one when it comes to self-employment policy.

Governor Sherrill has a terrific opportunity right now to demonstrate that she really will be doing things differently. Rescinding the proposed independent-contractor rule would send a clear and desperately needed message that she sees us and hears us, and that she actually is creating a government that works for us instead of against us.

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The background noise makes it hard to hear every word, but based on what is audible, these two elected officials were talking about minority- and women-owned small businesses, and about how those businesses do not have lawyers and lobbyists to protect our interests in Trenton the way that big businesses do.

Senator Sarlo seemed to think it’s funny how New Jersey’s government—in his own words—kills women- and minority-owned small businesses with regulations.

Lieutenant Governor Caldwell appeared to say that the newly installed administration of Governor Mikie Sherrill intends to do something about that problem.

It’s about damn time somebody did.

I happened to have tears in my eyes when this video came across my screen on Friday afternoon. I was sitting in a chair in my den doomscrolling, at the end of what had been a really tough and sleepless week. Just a few hours earlier, a veterinarian had come to my home and euthanized my 14-year-old dog, Ginger.

And as unbelievable as it sounds, while the veterinarian and I had been kneeling together over Ginger’s body that morning, we had found ourselves discussing independent-contractor policy.

We were the women Senator Sarlo was laughing about, the women whose smallest of small businesses he apparently thinks it’s funny to kill.

Not-So-Small Talk

My longtime vet who had diagnosed Ginger’s kidney disease, and who had been by my side in my home for my dog Blue’s euthanasia a few years ago, was the wonderful Dr. Lauren Semanchik. Tragically, her ex-boyfriend—a state trooper formerly with Governor Phil Murphy’s security detail—murdered her, along with her new boyfriend, before killing himself back in August.

That’s why, last week, I had to call on a total stranger for help with Ginger’s euthanasia. As if the day wasn’t already going to be hard enough.

Dr. Sandra pulled into my driveway up in Morris County something like 24 hours after Senator Sarlo and Lieutenant Governor Caldwell had that conversation down in Trenton. I saw her car through my window, and I left Ginger sleeping peacefully in my den as I went outside to meet this new vet.

Somewhere between my front walkway and driveway, I extended a handshake with the intent to thank Dr. Sandra for coming. But then I burst into tears.

A generous, kind hug from Dr. Sandra and a few minutes after that, all three of us were in my den, in the same exact spot where Dr. Lauren had euthanized Blue, only this time with Ginger in my lap as Dr. Sandra prepared the needles.

There’s a weird couple of minutes when you’re euthanizing a dog. Time passes between the first needle, which puts the dog into a deep sleep, and the second needle, which completes the process. Some people cry. Some go quiet. A lot of us, I’m told, make small talk with the vet.

Dr. Sandra, quite skillfully, asked me to tell her about Ginger after the first needle went in. I got to share some happy stories about the good times while petting Ginger and waiting for her eyes and head to droop for the last time.

But I started to have trouble holding back the grief, thinking about Lauren and Blue and Ginger all at the same time. I deflected as I choked back tears.

“Could I ask you a question?” I said.

“Sure,” Dr. Sandra replied. “I’m an open book.”

“Why did you start your own euthanasia business?”

Dr. Sandra explained how she had previously worked for a euthanasia company, but its owners had wanted to make her an employee and dictate her schedule. Dr. Sandra has kids. She wanted to be with them outside of school hours and on holidays. She didn’t want anyone interfering with her work-life balance as a mom. So, she opened her own shop.

I was absolutely stunned as I held Ginger’s dying body in my arms.

As best as I can recall, I blubbered something along the lines of, “You know, I’m my own boss, too. And I’ve spent a lot of time fighting for women like us to be able to live the kinds of lives we want to live.”

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Our Lives are Not a Joke

You can imagine how offended I felt just a few hours later when I saw Senator Sarlo laughing out loud about using our own government to try and kill the small businesses that women like us own.

It felt similar to the time Governor Murphy laughed out loud at the widespread public outcry over the proposed independent-contractor rule at New Jersey’s Department of Labor & Workforce Development—a rule proposal that continues to threaten many of us smallest of small-business owners to this day.

Senator Sarlo, while he was supposed to be paying his respects to former Governor Codey, had instead demonstrated a lack of respect for us all. And that was after he and state Senator Benjie Wimberly each personally attempted to protect the male-dominated financial-adviser profession from the proposed rule, similar to how state Senator Jon Bramnick tried to protect the caddies who carry his golf clubs in that male-dominated profession.

It’s beyond frustrating that all the rest of us have to keep fighting for our livelihoods while certain elected officials play favorites. Independent contractors like me may not have dedicated lobbyists, but we have absolutely been raising our voices and making our frustration clear for years now.

In fact, I went and testified again just last month at the State House in Trenton—yes, Senator Sarlo, on my own time and my own dime—about how we need our lawmakers to protect us all. Here is that testimony, for any lawmakers who may have missed it:

And here is the testimony I gave in June—also on my own time and my own dime—at the public hearing about New Jersey’s proposed independent-contractor rule:

And here is the opening statement I gave before the U.S. Senate in July—yet again on my own time and my own dime—about how what’s happening in New Jersey is an escalation of horribly destructive attacks that independent contractors have been enduring nationwide for years now:

Women like me, from New Jersey to California to Minnesota to Washington, D.C., have been stating our case clearly for years.

What we need is more lawmakers who are willing to listen and make this madness stop. We need elected officials who take our concerns seriously.

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Let These Words Fork Lightning

The ability to be an independent contractor is incredibly important to women, in particular. We are far more likely to own the smallest of small businesses—those with no employees—than we are to own businesses that have employees.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, while women own just 22.3% of employer firms, we own 42.7% of nonemployer firms. That’s why restrictive independent-contractor policy has a disproportionate, negative effect on women—an effect that is documented in this report from members of the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and by leading economists from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, who most recently looked at New Jersey data in particular.

The Independent Women’s Forum, less than a year ago, documented that 90% of women nationwide agree flexibility in the way we work is especially important to parents and caregivers. That’s because two out of three family caregivers are women.

Maybe we’re caring for young kids while we’re working. Or helping aging parents. Or ailing spouses.

And yes, I count needing to work through things like the last days of Ginger’s kidney failure as family caregiving, as well.

I sincerely hope that Lieutenant Governor Caldwell meant what he said in that hot mic video from the State House Rotunda, about the Sherrill administration intending to do things differently in this policy area.

We are in desperate need of lawmakers who will stop laughing at us and start talking with us about independent-contractor policy. Give us smallest of small-business owners—especially the women—a meaningful seat at the table when crafting policy that directly affects our lives and livelihoods. Stop proposing deeply misguided legislation and rules that will hurt us.

I’m having a tough week here at home, but even so, I remain available to any lawmakers who are willing to have these much-needed policy discussions. And I am hopeful that our state’s newly elected female governor will have our backs, because it certainly would be far easier to have conversations than be forced to keep fighting.

Either way, women like me who know what matters most in life are not going to let our way of earning a living go gently into that good night.

There is, quite simply, far too much at stake.

In loving memory of my sweet girl Ginger, 2012-2026

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The paperwork can be found here. It’s Executive Order No. 7.

Lawyers, lobbyists and advocates have been parsing the language in the executive order since Friday to try and determine whether it means the Murphy administration’s proposed independent-contractor rule—which is still live at New Jersey’s Department of Labor & Workforce Development—is now paused for 90 days so the Sherrill administration can review and consider it, or if the rule must be withdrawn altogether.

I’ve heard smart people say they believe the wording in this executive order means a pause, and I’ve heard other smart people say they believe it means withdrawal.

Either way, I think this is a good development in terms of trying to stop this proposed rule from being adopted.

Here are the clauses from the executive order that people are debating, and why.

The Pause Interpretation

Governor Sherrill’s executive order, like her social-media post, is clear-cut about the 90-day pause going into effect so her administration can review all rulemaking that’s still in the works from the Murphy administration. That’s common sense. No incoming governor would want to be stuck with brand-new rules that are inconsistent with the new administration’s plans.

If we assume that the independent-contractor rule is paused, but not withdrawn, then the next step is to understand the criteria that the Sherrill administration would use to review it.

One of the reasons Executive Order No. 7 lists for the 90-day pause in rulemaking is the following:

“… this review of proposed administrative rules is especially necessary to address the current economic and affordability crisis in New Jersey, and to ensure that the regulatory processes of state government do not have the effect of impeding the creation, growth, or expansion of business enterprises, hindering job creation, or undermining this Administration’s commitment to making government effective, accountable, transparent, and user-friendly…”

That bit made quite a lot of people believe that the Sherrill administration, either during or at the end of the 90-day pause, would ultimately jettison the Murphy administration’s proposed independent-contractor rule.

There are two main reasons why:

• Attorneys say the proposed rule poses an existential threat to independent contracting and would almost entirely eviscerate any chance of establishing independent-contractor status in New Jersey. That seems to fall directly under what Executive Order No. 7 says about ensuring that government is not “impeding the creation, growth, and expansion of business enterprises.” This proposed rulemaking—according to everything attorneys and other experts laid out in the thousands of public comments—would stop people from creating the smallest of small businesses as independent contractors, and would make it incredibly hard, if not impossible, for larger businesses to work with independent contractors to grow.

• There are about 9,500 written public comments on file about this proposed rule, and 99% of them are opposed. That seems to fall directly under Executive Order No. 7 too, in the part about the Sherrill administration being committed to making government more accountable to the people. The people have spoken quite loudly in opposition to this proposed rule. A government that is accountable to the people would have rescinded this rule proposal a long time ago.

However, Governor Sherrill’s executive order also states this:

“…this review of pending rule proposals, nevertheless, should not lead to any actions that would compromise the public health, safety, welfare, or security; obstruct or impair essential operations or functions of any administrative agencies or authorities; adversely impact compliance with any court order or statutory deadline; or prejudice the State of New Jersey with respect to the receipt of funding or assistance from the federal government or the ability to obtain any certifications from the federal government…”

That right there is a big, fat loophole that could be used against independent contractors.

We do not yet know the name of Governor Sherrill’s nominee for Labor Commissioner. We know that she held her first Cabinet meeting on Friday, and that Murphy-era Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo (who may have remained in the job if Sherrill wanted him to stay) did not appear to be there. Asaro-Angelo’s apparent absence suggests that Sherrill intends to replace him, but we don’t know the candidate she’s considering, and whether he or she would share Asaro-Angelo’s hostility toward independent contracting.

If Governor Sherrill replaces Asaro-Angelo with another hardcore freelance buster, then that person could attempt to make the case that failing to finalize the proposed independent-contractor rule would:

• compromise public welfare by allowing employees to remain misclassified, and;

• impair essential functions of the Labor Department as it attempts to stop employee misclassification.

Now, I’m no lawyer, but I think those arguments in favor of finalizing the rule proposal would be a stretch.

As I’ve been reporting for months on end, the thousands upon thousands of pages of public comments filed as part of this rulemaking process—along with the Murphy administration’s own stated results after eight years of following this freelance-busting strategy—demonstrate quite clearly that what’s happening goes far beyond attempting to stop employee misclassification

Leading legislators say that what’s happening with this proposed rulemaking appears to go beyond the bounds of statute and case law, threatening the livelihoods of properly classified independent contractors and attempting to bypass the Legislature in a way that is inconsistent with legislative intent. Leading economists say that what’s been happening in recent years is already harming the state’s W-2 employment, self-employment and overall employment, with a disproportionate and negative effect on women, and that the proposed rulemaking would create more problems than it solves.

So, assuming that the Sherrill administration does indeed want to support businesses and be accountable to the public, then the proposed independent-contractor rule would be reviewed, considered and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean with cinderblocks to weigh it down, so that it never can see the light of day again.

At a minimum, based on Governor Sherrill’s executive order, there is real reason to hope that’s what will happen next.

But there’s another wrinkle to consider as well.

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The Withdrawal Interpretation

Executive Order No. 7 also describes situations where proposed rules must be withdrawn, but this language is less clear-cut than the requirement for a 90-day pause. I’m hearing conflicting opinions about whether the withdrawal language in the executive order might apply to the proposed independent-contractor rule.

The executive order defines a “proposed rule” like this:

“‘Proposed rule’ means a rule proposed by publication in the New Jersey Register within the past 12 months, or within the past 18 months if the relevant agency has issued a notice of substantial change to the proposed rule, which has neither been adopted nor expired, or a proposal filed with the Office of Administrative Law (‘OAL’) for publication but not yet published in the New Jersey Register.”

That definition of “proposed rule” appears to include the Labor Department’s proposed independent-contractor rule. It was proposed by publication in the New Jersey Register within the past 12 months, and it has neither been adopted nor expired.

However, the executive order also states this, about withdrawal of a proposed rule:

“With respect to any proposed rule that may have been filed with OAL but has not been published in the New Jersey Register, the head of the State agency proposing the rule shall withdraw the proposed rule in a manner consistent with the Rules for Agency Rulemaking and the practices and procedures of the OAL.”

This is the part of Governor Sherrill’s executive order that has people debating about the independent-contractor rule possibly being withdrawn.

As noted above, the independent contractor rule was published, in proposal form, in the New Jersey Register. But as I reported on January 20, it was not published in final adoption form in the New Jersey Register prior to the Murphy administration ending.

However, it’s possible that it has been filed with the Office of Administrative law in final adoption form, but not yet published. That’s possible because Governor Murphy’s labor commissioner, Robert Asaro-Angelo, could have sent the finalized rule to the Office of Administrative Law on January 8, before the Murphy administration left office on January 20. If that happened, then the final version of the independent-contractor rule would not be published in the New Jersey Register until February 2, which is a week from now:

The question I hear people debating is whether such a move might fall under the executive order’s language about “a proposal filed with the Office of Administrative Law for publication but not yet published in the New Jersey Register.”

I did try to contact the Office of Administrative Law today, hoping its team might shed some light, but nobody is answering the phone. I assume that everyone is still busy digging out from the big snowstorm.

What we do know is that if Asaro-Angelo attempted this kind of last-minute move as the Murphy administration prepared to leave town, it would be precisely the type of thing that part of Executive Order No. 7 appears intended to block. Governor Sherrill’s executive order explicitly states that her administration:

“… should be afforded sufficient opportunity to examine the proposed rules and regulations prior to their adoption to ensure they are not inconsistent with the policies and priorities of this Administration…”

We need more clarity about this withdrawal section of the executive order. But for now, there appears to be agreement that the independent-contractor rule proposal is at least paused for 90 days so the Sherrill administration can consider it anew.

Here’s hoping that one way or the other, and sooner rather than later, this deeply misguided rule proposal will be gone for good.

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