The Rise of the Gig Economy: Fact or Fiction?
AEA Papers and Proceedings
vol. 109,
May 2019
(pp. 357-61)
Abstract
Gig work mediated through online platforms has received much recent attention. We find only one sector—the transportation services sector—in which there is unambiguous evidence of substantial and rapidly growing gig activity. A challenge for tracking and understanding the rise in gig activity is that core household surveys are missing the recent overall rise in self-employment that is apparent in administrative and private sector transactions data. We show that this limitation of available household survey data is evident even in the transportation services sector, where the growth in self-employment activity since 2013 has been exponential.Citation
Abraham, Katharine G., John Haltiwanger, Kristin Sandusky, and James Spletzer. 2019. "The Rise of the Gig Economy: Fact or Fiction?" AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109: 357-61. DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20191039Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
- J23 Labor Demand
- L84 Personal, Professional, and Business Services