The gig economy.

Except while Tina Brown‘s vision of a future of freelancers was pretty bleak, personal finance expert Suze Orman is promoting it.

Yeah. In the July issue of O: The Oprah Magazine, Orman tells an HR pro looking for work to “stop looking for a staff position. Make them an offer that acknowledges these tough times, and package yourself as an independent contractor available for hire on a project-by-project basis.”

Pete Savage, co-author of The Wealthy Freelancer, writes, “Seeing advice like this in the pages of O, from a mega-high profile author like Orman will be a wake-up call for a lot of people. If you thought ‘going solo’ was just a trend, watch what happens now, and in the next few years to come…
If you’re reading this blog, odds are you’re already an independent professional, consultant, freelancer, solopreneur, whatever-you-call-yourself or you’re working toward that vision. So… if you’ve been hesitantly dipping your toe in the warm waters of freelancing, now is the time to take the plunge. FULLY. Get ahead of the wave, go all out, and build your solo business.”

Is there really a “bad” time to start a solo business, though? The advantage of starting in a good economy is that you could take more time to build up a savings cushion. The advantage of starting in a bad economy: more opportunity. And it might be better than waiting for that unemployment check.