Gig Work Get Its Due

A new report from the World Bank estimates the number of people employed globally in the online gig economy to be as many as 435 million people, accounting for up to 12.5% of the global labor force.

Gig work is defined as a job in which a worker is paid for a particular task or for a defined period (think Uber drivers). Whilst the gig economy has been growing for years, participation has been challenging to measure, and even countries with robust labor force statistics do not have an accurate way of measuring who is participating in gig work. This is because gig work is mediated through digital platforms. Gig workers are not employees of companies like Uber or TaskRabbit. Rather, they complete tasks, like driving or food delivery, for customers of the app or website. Some gig work is location based, like the examples cited above. Other gig work can be purely online, such as data entry, image tagging, proofreading, website design, content writing and many more tasks.

This report focuses mainly on online gig work and has attempted to quantify participants globally. Here are some key findings:

• Online gig work now constitutes a growing and non-negligible part of the labor market, accounting for 4.4 to 12.5 percent of the global labor force. The authors of the study estimate that the number of online gig workers ranges from 154 million to 435 million globally and that there has been rapid growth triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Online gig work is not just a developed-country phenomenon. It’s increasingly becoming a popular source of employment in developing nations. Developed nations still dominate the demand for online labor, but developing countries are rapidly catching up. An estimated 40% of traffic to gig platforms is driven by low- and middle-income countries.

• Online gig work can provide opportunities for young people, women, low-skilled workers or people in areas with few job opportunities. Most gig workers tend to be under the age of 30 and seek to earn income, learn new skills or have the flexibility to combine gig work with school or another job. Women in most regions are participating in the online gig economy to a greater extent than in the general labor market, though a wage gap still exists between men and women.

• Gig work is a newer form of work thanks to the role technology plays in it. However, gig work also resembles other types of informal work arrangements that have existed for many years. Gig work, particularly in developing nations, often exists outside the purview of labor regulations. Gig workers may lack access to benefits like pensions, retirement benefits or other social insurance that exist within more formal work arrangements. 

There are a number of positives that come with the expansion of gig work. The authors of the study cite the opportunity to build up digital skills among a country’s workforce as well as bring more people into the labor market who may not have the ability to participate in the traditional labor force, for example young people in areas that lack ‘traditional’ job opportunities.

However, there are challenges with this kind of work too. Inequalities exist: there is a documented pay gap between men and women, and people without access to the internet or digital devices are essentially shut out. Gig jobs can also be sporadic, lack clear (or any) career progression and often do not have social insurance, like retirement benefits.

It’s undeniable, though, that gig work is here to stay. As gig workers proliferate and the industry matures, we are likely to see pushes for regulation and attempts at collective bargaining by gig workers. Recent developments in artificial intelligence may also impact the kinds of tasks that are available to gig workers.

What we can say for sure is that it’s vital that labor force surveys find ways to measure these new forms of work, so that governments and businesses can better understand who is participating in this newer frontier of work.

Continue reading the full report from the World Bank here.