According to a study released by the UK think tank The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), there are about 1.1 million gig workers in Great Britain.
Here's how the study defines the gig economy:
"When we refer to the ‘gig economy’, we are discussing the trend of using online platforms to find small jobs, sometimes completed immediately after request (essentially, on-demand). Much like an actor or musician goes from ‘gig to gig’, workers in the gig economy are sourcing one job at a time, but by logging into an app or clicking through to a website. Each ride an Uber driver accepts is a ‘gig’ or a single job, as is each booking a Hassle cleaner makes to tidy a flat or every errand run through TaskRabbit."
This is quite similar to the definition used in the Intuit On-Demand Workforce study series, which covers the U.S.
The findings are also similar.
The RSA study shows that about 2% (1.1 million) of Brits are working with online platforms. The Intuit study shows about 3.9 million Americans (about 2.6% of the workforce) do this type of work.
The attitudes, motivations and demographic findings are also pretty similar. As the study charts below show, Britain's gig workers mostly work part-time to supplement their income.
And both studies report the majority of gig workers are satisfied with gig work and plan to continue. Not surprisingly, most are satisfied because they like the flexibility and control gig work provides.
This, of course, echos the findings of almost all gig worker studies.
And, of course, despite these findings the press coverage of the study is mostly quite negative about the gig economy.
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