Professor Guy Standing

Catch Guy Standing on Do Radio: Where To Next? with Mike Warwick and Dan Kieran 22nd - 28th June 2026.

Economist, Author and Activist

Professor Guy Standing is one of the world's leading voices on economic justice, inequality, and the future of work. A Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London and a founding member of the Basic Income Earth Network, he has spent decades making the case that the way we organise work, time, and security is failing millions of people and that there is a better way.

His concept of the "precariat", a growing class of people living in chronic insecurity, without control over their time or a meaningful stake in the future, has shaped political and economic debate across the globe. His warning, first published in 2011, that this group would become vulnerable to populist movements and political "monsters" has proved grimly prophetic.

At the heart of his work is a deceptively simple idea: that a basic income, modest and unconditional, is not a utopian fantasy but an ethical imperative rooted in justice, freedom, and the fundamental human need for security. He challenges the "jobs fetish" that measures human worth only through subordinate labour, and argues that caregiving, community, and connection to nature are work too, and are vital, invisible and long overdue recognition.