During COVID, when we didn’t have masks, seamstresses made them and distributed them for free. Magnificent outpouring of solidarity. After a few weeks, however, they expressed their discomfort. They worked more than ten hours a day, sometimes every day, and yet many of them lived on Active Solidarity Income (RSA). An aberration.
Their activity was vital: in times of epidemic, having a mask is a question of life and death. But masks are also a commodity. And making them is work. Except that the work is regulated, paid, and protected. You can’t make someone work every day, more than ten hours a day, for free.
Constrained and chosen contributory activity
However, their case did not find any response. Their labor was not considered work by society. It was a dedication, a gift, a selfless act, even a hobby. This situation – essential labor that is not treated as work – is not exceptional. It crosses all dimensions of collective life and the economy. However, no conceptual category designates it in its entirety. No indicator measures it. We treat the problem in silos, multiplying analyses, sometimes bits of solutions, without ever understanding what is really at stake.
The notion of contributory activity fills this blind spot. Concretely, contributory activity takes two main forms: constrained and chosen. Constrained contributory activity refers to free work from which one cannot escape, as an individual, citizen or consumer. It is obviously produced largely in the family sphere where, for example, the sole contribution of caregivers represents 7 million jobs, or the equivalent of 266 billion euros.
But the constrained contributory activity takes on more unexpected aspects, as with digital technology: installing a device, solving a technical problem, completing a CAPTCHA, maintaining a presence on the networks to remain employable. This digital labor represents the equivalent of 1.2 million jobs in France – double the jobs in the sector. Thus, digital companies do not only exploit our data. They also exploit our free work.
As for the contributory activity chosen, it is of course our voluntary commitments – 4% of contributory activity, or the equivalent of 1.4 million jobs. But it is also the activity of rural elected officials who are not paid up to the minimum wage or without sufficient retirement contributions. Or even that of self-employed workers and their families in structurally deficit sectors: farmers, artists and authors, researchers, athletes, transition actors, social entrepreneurs, etc.
Three days per week per French
In 2022, a first symbolic estimate was made by cross-checking available data on the different types of contributors. The method consisted of reconstituting their working time and then evaluating its value on the basis of the average salary in the voluntary sector, a choice motivated by the similarity of the areas covered.
According to this study, the contributory activity of the French corresponded to 43 million jobs. Paying it would have cost 68% of GDP, or 1,557 billion euros. On average, each French person carries out three days of contributory activity per week, the equivalent of €28,000 per year (What we sacrifice to wealth. Contributory activity, Carole Lipsyc, Éditions de l’Aube, La Tour-d’Aigues, 2024).
Talk about the remuneration of our real contributions
Without this contributory contribution, without these avoided costs, without this human ecosystem service, would there be a lucrative economy? This is a question that no economic theory asks: neither the classics, nor the Marxists, nor the neo-Maussian ones. Contributory activity is the best-kept family secret of market society. And like all family secrets, it weighs on our ability to face reality and in particular the future of birth rates, democracy, food, energy or digital sovereignty, the transition, and the solvency of individuals.
To navigate current changes – notably the irruption of AI into the production cycle – we need to know the reality of human contributions to value creation. Governing effectively requires having real data on the wealth produced and on all its producers, including contributors.
Contributory effort – the overall value of our contributory activity – could thus become a complementary indicator of GDP. A way of documenting the growing transfer of burdens to individuals, at the cost of their impoverishment, their burn-out or their resentment. Contributory activity thus shifts the lines of reflection on value: it does not speak of redistribution but of remuneration for our real contributions. It also raises the question of what is not solvent but essential.
A conference in Paris
Carole Lipsyc will speak at the conference “Thinking about the world that is coming” on June 10 in the afternoon. Information and registration here.
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