Precariat

The Latin word precarius described something obtained by prayer or entreaty, held at the pleasure of another person.¹ By the 1640s, English had adopted precarious as a legal term for conditions that depended entirely on another’s will. A precarious existence was one that could be revoked at any moment.

The neologism precariat appeared in Europe in the late 1980s, a portmanteau of precarious and proletariat. It described a growing population of nonunionized service employees, the partially employed, and the unemployed.²

In 2011, the British economist Guy Standing published The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, giving the term its most systematic definition. Standing described a class distinct from the old proletariat: people with unstable labor, unpredictable incomes, and diminishing citizenship rights.³

Unlike the industrial working class, which could bargain collectively, the precariat worked on short-term contracts, gig platforms, and zero-hour arrangements. Standing estimated the class was growing in every advanced economy.

In Italy, the concept took on cultural dimensions. In 2004, activists created a patron saint for the movement: San Precario, with a feast day on February 29, a date that only intermittently exists.⁴ In Japan, a parallel group called freeters (a blend of free and the German Arbeiter, meaning worker) described young people pushed into a cycle of casual labor.

The Great British Class Survey of 2013, a collaboration between the BBC and researchers from several universities, classified the precariat as the most deprived class in Britain, with low levels of economic, cultural, and social capital.⁵

Timeline

• 1640s — Precarious entered English as a legal term for conditions held at another’s pleasure.
• Late 1980s — Precariat appeared in Europe, combining precarious with proletariat.
• 2011 — Guy Standing published The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class.
• 2013 — The BBC’s Great British Class Survey classified the precariat as the most deprived class in Britain.