Everyone has heard about Uber drivers but how much do we know about what has been described as the ‘online gig economy’? There has been a rapid increase in this new labour market where employers use online labour platforms to engage workers for piecemeal, short-term or project-based work delivered over the internet.
Oxford University researcher Professor Vili Lehdonvirta and fellow researcher Dr Otto Kässi are now publicly launching an Online Labour Index, which has already gathered a wealth of data on the online gig economy from sites and apps across the world between May-September 2016. It shows that employers in the United States are the biggest users of online platforms for recruiting freelance workers, representing 52% of all the vacancies posted, followed by Britain at 6.3%, India at 5.9%, and Australia at 5.7%, according to latest figures from the index.,
Millions of people now use online platforms and apps to find online work and recruit occasional help over the Internet. Yet, despite it being a rapidly growing market, the relevant data is not recorded in conventional employment statistics. The Online Labour Index, which updates automatically in real time, currently only captures data from English-language sites although there are plans to track platforms in other languages as well.
The index shows that between May and September 2016, the number of vacancies grew by 9%, representing an annual growth rate of 25%. The growth was fastest among UK employers, who increased the amount of labour bought online over the period by nearly 14%, with a 7.5% rise elsewhere in Europe and 6% in the US.
Professor Lehdonvirta comments: ‘These are striking figures when they are contrasted with growth rates in conventional labour markets, which remain stagnant in the UK and US according to latest national statistics.Yet, this burgeoning online economy has been largely unobserved and is missing from conventional labour market statistics.’
The Online Labour Index was built as part of ‘iLabour’, a research project into the digital transformation of labour markets, funded by the European Research Council. The index also tracks job categories, showing that software development and technology are currently the most sought-after skills in the online labour market. Creative and multimedia work is the second largest category, followed by clerical and data entry work. Others were writing and translation services, professional services, and sales and marketing support. Employers from different countries are buying similar mixes of skills, according to current data.
Prof Lehdonvirta comments: ‘This similarity between countries is surprising given substantial differences are recorded in conventional labour market statistics. However, this could be because software development and technology companies are among the first to use online platforms for engaging workers, as you might expect. This practice may soon replace job agencies or traditional ad placements and become more commonplace for sectors across the board. Once this happens, we would expect the Online Labour Index to reflect countries’ economic structures more closely.’
Labour markets are in the midst of a dramatic transformation, where standard employment is being increasingly supplemented or replaced by temporary freelancers who are recruited online. Companies and entrepreneurs are using these platforms to find, hire, supervise, and pay workers on a project, piece-rate, or hourly basis. This “on-demand” economy has deep and wide-ranging implications.
The Online Labour Index will be publicly launched at the Oxford Internet Institute’s conference: ‘The Internet, Politics, and Policy’ on Thursday and Friday, 22-23 September. Professor Lehdonvirta and Dr Kässi, both researchers in the Oxford Internet Institute, will be making a presentation based on their paper, titled ‘Online Labour Index: Measuring the Online Gig Economy for Policy and Research’.
For more information, please contact the principal investigator: Prof Vili Lehdonvirta, email:vili.lehdonvirta@oii.ox.ac.uk. Alternatively, contact the University of Oxford News Office on +44 (0)1865 280534; email: news.office@admin.ox.ac.uk
Images and real-time data from the Online Labour Index can be obtained at http://ilabour.oii.ox.ac.uk/online-labour-index/
A film of Prof Vili Lehdonvirta explaining the objectives of the OLI can be viewed at https://youtu.be/nIoncQhmDJo (unlisted on YouTube). News organisations are welcome to embed the video on their websites.
The Online Labour Index is constructed by tracking all the projects/tasks posted to the five largest English-language online labour platforms, representing at least 60% of the market by traffic. The projects are then classified by occupation and employer country. The data is normalized so that 100 index points represents the daily average number of projects in May 2016. The resulting index is published as an automatically updated open data set and online visualization.
ENDS
Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research
Vili Lehdonvirta examines the politics and socio-economic impacts of digital technologies. He is one of the world's most cited authors on gig work and the platform economy. His current research deals with the geopolitics of digital infrastructures.
Former Researcher
Otto Kässi is a labour economist with a background in econometrics. His research concentrates on empirical study of online labour markets, as part of the iLabour project with Vili Lehdonvirta.
The iLabour project is premised on the idea that a fundamental change is taking place in labour markets. It seeks to understand the social and policy implications of this momentous shift.
