The Lo Down: The Portfolio Job and why UBI is needed

People used to talk about portfolio careers.

The idea was simple: instead of one lifelong job, you stitched together multiple roles over time. You consulted. You taught. You invested. You built things. You moved between worlds.

That framing made sense in a time when a career was unstable but the job, or the fact of holding down a job at all times, was a constant.

That was a time likely post 1980s and definitively 1990s after pensions, and right up to now in the 2020’s.

I think that distinction no longer holds.

Today, the portfolio isn’t the career. The job is the portfolio.

A traditional job was designed for an industrial world. One role. One function. One reporting line. One output.

You were hired to do a thing. Usually one thing.

And thus, the tradeoff was that the firm, one firm, would take care of you throughout your life. Be there until your working career, and even beyond; through your early days, through marriage, to putting the kids to school, and in your retired life.

Somewhere around the late 1980s, that social contract between employee and firm broke down. Pensions disappeared, so the retirement package was no longer was applicable. Firms would lay off employees regularly, forcing employees to be more flexible. Contracting became preferred by firms, who did not want to be saddled with permanent employees.

Thus, portfolio careers emerged as a workaround. If institutions couldn’t give you stability, coherence, or growth, you had the agency to assemble it yourself across multiple jobs.

But something is quietly flipping. And I anticipate this will be the new way in the age of AI.