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In California, Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, and a half-dozen other companies are lobbying to defang a court ruling that could make it difficult to avoid reclassifying such workers as employees. And in Washington, the Republican-dominated National Labor Relations Board has made moves to undo an Obama-era precedent that could make big employers legally liable for contract workers even if they have only indirect control over them.The GOP takeover in Washington is one reason the Temporary Workers of America, a union of bug testers for Microsoft Corp., gave up on what had been, for people in the software world, an almost unheard of unionization victory, says the group’s founder, Philippe Boucher.

Boucher and his ex-colleagues are among a growing population of tech workers, including many Uber drivers, Amazon.com warehouse loaders, and Google software engineers, who lack the rights and perks of those companies’ full-fledged employees.

Google parent Alphabet Inc. now has fewer direct employees than it does contract workers, some of whom write code and test self-driving cars.

Il n’existe pas d’étude nationale plus récente sur la viabilité économique des espaces de coworking, qu’ils soient d’initiative publique ou privée. Mais une enquête réalisée par le magazine Deskmag, en 2016, à l’échelle mondiale, révèle que 60 % des espaces de coworking sont déficitaires. L’étude constate que les tiers-lieux situés dans les grandes villes sont plus facilement rentables – à ­condition que le terrain ne soit pas déjà surpeuplé : « Dans les villes où il y a plus d’une cinquantaine d’espaces, la profitabilité chute », note l’enquête.