The Increasing Importance of Working Consumers: The Impact on Paid Workers

Prosumers, especially the sub-type of working consumers, are of increasing importance in various ways, including in their impact on paid employees. Working consumers are doing work traditionally done by those employees. They offer many advantages over paid employees, such as requiring little or no pay and benefits. While the increasing role of working consumers leads to the creation of many new jobs (e.g., in Amazon.com’s warehouses), they constitute a bigger but little recognized threat to many paid employees.