Last week the Big 3 strategy consulting firm BCG released THE NEW FREELANCERS: TAPPING TALENT IN THE GIG ECONOMY, a study on "those who find temporary work through digital labor-sharing platforms."
As part of the study BCG surveyed 11,000 workers in 11 countries: the US, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Japan, India, Indonesia, China, and Brazil.
BCG took a different approach to their survey than others have. They designed their survey to exclude highly educated workers—those with bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and above—and to include a large share of people with lower incomes.
They did to "to reflect the views, needs, and employment circumstances of the workers potentially most vulnerable to disruption ...".
Despite this approach, their findings in terms of the percentage of workers using online labor platforms and marketplaces and why they use them are consistent with other studies.
They're also consistent in finding most gig workers chose gig work and most prefer it over other options. Key quote:
Many of the new freelancers we surveyed are embracing the trend as a path to greater autonomy and more flexible and meaningful work.
As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), most gig work is done to generate supplemental income.
Because of their (intentionally) skewed sample, we can't precisely project how many people these percentages equate to. But for the U.S. we'd estimate 14% is somewhere around 20-25 million Americans.
The report also identifies 4 tribes of new freelancers. These are illustrated in the chart below.
The study points out that about half of the new freelancers - especially the "digital nomads" and "fly-in experts" - are doing skilled work. Again from the study:
Our worker survey, as noted earlier, was designed to include a significant sample of less-educated, lower-paid workers. But the perception that the gig economy is dominated by poorly paid work—such as ridesharing, delivery, clickwork, and microtasks—also proved false. Low-skill, low-wage freelance tasks accounted for only about half of the freelance work sourced through platforms. Much of the remainder comprised higher-skill, higher-paid work, such as software development and design.
This study is yet another confirmation that the gig economy is big, growing and that most gig workers choose and prefer gig work. It also shows that the gig economy includes many skilled workers doing higher-paid work.
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