It seems almost every day an on-demand economy company announces a big fund raise. For example, the delivery service Door Dash announced last week it raised an additional $40 million.
And pretty much all of these companies have business models built on the use of independent contractors as service "providers".
Most of these firms trying to attract independent contractors from roughly the same pool - people looking for flexible, independent work in the service sector with a lot of them only interested in working part-time.
This raises the question of whether or not there are enough independent contractors to go around - and, if there aren't, will there be an on-demand economy war for talent.
Already on-demand economy companies are facing worker recruitment issues. Otherwise they wouldn't be spending so much money trying to find and hire people see.
Zen99's interesting analysis of recruitment spend by on-demand economy companies, which we covered yesterday, shows the extent of the industry's recruiting efforts.
With the economy improving, unemployment continuing to fall and traditional employers starting to raise wages (Walmart and Target being examples), talent is already harder to attract than it was just a year or two ago.
In fact, there are many professions/job categories where the war for talent is quite real today. Mobile device programmers and welders are two examples.
Add in dozens (maybe many dozens) of on-demand companies collectively planning to hire literally millions of independent workers over the next few years, and you have the makings of potential bidding war for on-demand talent.
So will there be an on-demand economy war for talent? And if there is, what impact will it have on on-demand economy companies and their providers?
To be honest, we're asking these questions because we don't know the answers.
Over the next couple of months we're going to explore this issue and try to figure it out. We'll let you know what we find.