Optimize that ratio, ignore productivity, achieve glory.
That salary work mostly pays a lot more than gig work tells you something about the economic impact of both. Gig work might be more efficient than hourly pay for the same work, but it isn't maximizing overall economic efficiency, it's a middle man capturing more of the value.
But salaried work also needs things like a university degree (mostly). What I'm worried about isn't so much that there will always (or for the foreseeable future) be "skilled" and "unskilled" buckets of labor, but that there's this self-reinforcing loop that creates a permanent underclass of gig workers.
Lots of skilled jobs don't need college degrees, employers just require them because it's convenient filter that doesn't have much of a downside for them.
You did qualify your assertion with "mostly", but IME (I switched from trad salaried employment to FT consulting 2 years ago), there's a lot more money to be made in the latter. You have to deal with more risk and more uncertainty, but in terms of income, the upside is way, way higher.
I get that there is linguistic overlap and some similar conditions, but business consulting is better described as a professional service (like lawyering or accounting) than it is as gig labor.
That salary work mostly pays a lot more than gig work tells you something about the economic impact of both. Gig work might be more efficient than hourly pay for the same work, but it isn't maximizing overall economic efficiency, it's a middle man capturing more of the value.