The jobless Americans chasing the dream of ‘passive income’

There’s a genuine reorientation in the nation’s labor philosophy, and it seems to grow more fervent with each passing day. “As a result of the pandemic, most people realized that a seemingly safe job or industry can change overnight, and we really can’t predict those circumstances,” says Dorie Clark, a professor at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business a... See more

Interest in the r/passive_income subreddit, where users swap tips on earning extra cash, skyrocketed throughout the pandemic, while Google search inquiries on “passive income” have more than doubled since March 2020. And more people are now making money through unconventional means – the number of self-employed people who reported “unincorporated” ... See more

Many of us found ourselves out of a paycheck, and more importantly, reconsidering our foundational conceptions of work. Trauma and clarity are congenitally entwined.

Covid proved that there didn’t need to be a discernible difference between what he did for work and what he did for fun.

“It may seem obvious to an outsider that most people aren’t going to become rich by selling things on Amazon,” wrote Semuels. “But that’s the thing about gold rushes: Some people do find gold, and it is sometimes hard to tell what distinguishes the people who make it from those who don’t.”