Mobility is both the bane and the opportunity of the boundaryless workplace. On the one hand, the emerging digital era employment relationship creates a more interesting work environment and offers workers more autonomy and freedom than did the industrial era job structures. Yet on the other hand, for many it creates uncertainty, shifts risk, and fosters vulnerability.

Some of the groups that are disadvantaged in the new work regime can be easily identified. For example, older workers caught in the transition are heavy losers. Having been led to expect a good job and a secure future, they instead discovered that their expectations were chimeral. Another group that has not fared well is the low-skilled – those who have neither the necessary training nor the ability to reinvent themselves, retool, and adapt to new labor market demands. A third disadvantaged group is the risk-averse – those who were comfortable with the stability and certainty that internal labor markets offered, and lack the desire or initiative to seek out opportunities, to network, and to build their own careers.

In addition to the older, the unskilled, and the risk-averse, all workers now face heightened risks at certain points in their working lives. Given the churning and constant change that characterize the new workplace, all face a high likelihood that their working lives will be peppered by occasional periods of unemployment. Therefore every worker requires a reliable safety net to ease the transitions and cushion the fall when they are left behind by the boundaryless workplace.