Equal Pay for Contractors
By Arman Jaffer and James Liu
The tech sector, an industry known for high wages and generous benefits, has accelerated its use of contract workers that have similar responsibilities as full-time employees but who are employed by staffing agencies. While these contractors are employed in core functions such as engineering, they miss out on different forms of compensation and benefits and incur additional costs such as job instability. This pay disparity exacerbates social inequities since contracted workers are more likely to be racial and gender minorities compared to their full-time counterparts. These policy briefs propose a Contract Pay Gap calculator to help companies and workers advocate for a more equitable compensation strategy for these contract workers.
These briefs were completed as part of a project for the 2021 Aspen Tech Policy Hub Fellowship, a program to teach technology experts how to impact policy.
