One of the big challenges of the New Economy is making employee benefits portable. Most broadly, the problem is that our system of job-based health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, pensions, and personal savings and investment instruments, is inadequate for an economy in which more and more Americans will change jobs and even careers much more often.

But an even more vexing problem is supplying such benefits, at an affordable cost, to the growing number of Americans who are working outside the entire job-based benefit system: independent contractors, freelancers, temps and other "contingent workers," and part-time workers. These "independent" or "nontraditional" workers already represent as much as a third of our workforce -- a number that is likely to grow even larger in the future. They typically do not qualify for either employer-sponsored or government-sponsored benefits, and must often pay prohibitive prices for individual benefit packages, or simply do without.

In New York, in part thanks to a state grant sponsored by Democratic State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a pilot project targeted to New York City's "Silicon Alley" has started up that will help give free agents access to affordable insurance and financial services through collective purchasing power and customized benefit packages. Called the Portable Benefits Network, it's being established by Working Today, a New York-based nonprofit group that is well known for its pioneering work on the changing needs of our mobile workforce. The program plays the part of a corporate benefits manager by negotiating group rates for life, health, and disability insurance.

According to Working Today's Executive Director, Sara Horowitz (who will be profiled as a policy entrepreneur in the next issue of our Blueprint magazine, which will be posted on NDOL.org next week): "We chose Silicon Alley as our test market because it is a sector that leads the trends in the new work structures. If the pilot program proves to be operationally sound and financially feasible, the Benefits Network will be expanded to include other communities in New York State, covering individuals across the economic spectrum. While we are starting in New York, the demonstration Benefits Network will serve as a national model."

That's great news not only for New Yorkers, but for all Americans interested in adapting the job-based economic security "bargain" of the Industrial Age to the very different workplaces and careers that will increasingly dominate our economy in the Information Age. This Labor Day week is a good time to pay attention to progressive innovations that not only make work pay, but make work pay off in terms of a secure lifetime and retirement.