Last week the Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) released The Human Cloud, the Gig Economy & the Transformation of Work.
It nicely covers the topics mentioned in the report title. Key quote from the report on the size of the "human cloud":
"SIA estimates that total human cloud spending reached between $47 and $51 billion globally in 2016. The business-to-business (B2B) segment of the human cloud grew approximately 20% year-over-year, with remote work arrangements accounting for 80% of human cloud revenue and highlighting flexible work location as one of the benefits of the human cloud.
The report is excellent and well worth reading. We particularly liked their definitions and their human cloud framework and taxonomy.
The SIA defines the human cloud as:
... an emerging set of work intermediation models that enable work arrangements of various kinds to be established and completed (including payment of workers) entirely through a digital/online platform. In many cases (although not always), the platform also supports "the enactment and management" of the work (to a greater or lesser degree).
SIA does not include job boards or social networks in their definition because they don't enable or support work arrangements through to their completion.
They've also defined three human cloud subsets:
Online staffing platforms: enables hirers and independent workers to enter into, transact and complete work arrangements. Upwork and Fiverr are examples.
Online work services: these platforms enable the delivery of specialized services that are performed by independent workers. Uber, Lyft and Handy are examples
CrowdSourcing: These are platforms or marketplaces like Amazon Turk that allow for work to be broken into tasks and performed by a distributed "crowd" of many workers.
As the SIA chart above shows, there is overlap among the various types of human cloud services and service providers.
We like the SIA's taxonomy and definitions and plan to use them going forward.
The report goes on to say that the global size of the gig economy is $3.5 trillion.
To put that into perspective, if the gig economy were an independent country it would have the 4th largest economy in world (smaller than Japan, but a bit bigger than Germany).
So the gig economy is big.
Click here to go to the report's press release and landing page.
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