TechCrunch has a post on a couple of new labor-as-a-service start-ups that’s worth a look.

CrowdFlower is a labor as a service startup that helps businesses outsource mundane or repetitive tasks to the cloud. Now the startup has attracted a competitor, recently launched CloudCrowd, which also promises increase efficiency and lower costs to companies by breaking large projects into smaller tasks, and distributing them to its virtual workforce. Once a client assigns a task to CloudCrowd, the company will distribute tasks its work force of more than 100,000 workers. With each task completed, a worker earn a credibility rating that determines the types of tasks they are offered. Workers who don’t have a rating yet are assigned basic tasks until they develop a reputation. Workers are able to see how much each separate task pays, and earnings are distributed through PayPal.

Imagine how valuable this might be for stay-at-home parents or conscientious teenagers looking to make money on the side, or for that matter for creative professionals looking to supplement their income. Right now, the tasks involved are fairly limited, but one assumes that they’ll increase in complexity over time.

The important thing about this phenomenon is that it reflects a powerful structural dynamic: outsourcing and the disaggregation of firms works, and so it will continue. This will entail a disaggregation of the traditional job, a move in the direction of what some have dubbed “the gig economy.” Job-based health and pension benefits don’t make a great deal of sense in this world, and that is a key driver of the need for serious, thorough-going reform of the welfare state.