Formal layoff trackers are built around the employment relationship — a company, a headcount, a termination event. Freelancers and independent contractors fall outside every one of those categories. When a writer loses three clients to AI-generated copy or a designer watches her Upwork queue go quiet, no Challenger report captures it, no WARN Act notice is filed, and no state unemployment office records the loss. The Atlantic's framing — the problem with letting AI do the 'grunt work' — names exactly the tier of labor that disappears first and counts…