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How Many Online Workers are there in the World? A Data-Driven Assessment

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  • Kässi, Otto
  • Lehdonvirta, Vili
  • Stephany, Fabian

Abstract

An unknown number of people around the world are earning income by working through online labour platforms such as Upwork and Amazon Mechanical Turk. We combine data collected from various sources to build a data-driven assessment of the number of such online workers (also known as online freelancers) globally. Our headline estimate is that there are 163 million freelancer profiles registered on online labour platforms globally. Approximately 19 million of them have obtained work through the platform at least once, and 5 million have completed at least 10 projects or earned at least $1000. These numbers suggest a substantial growth from 2015 in registered worker accounts, but much less growth in amount of work completed by workers. Our results indicate that online freelancing represents a non-trivial segment of labour today, but one that is spread thinly across countries and sectors.

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  • Kässi, Otto & Lehdonvirta, Vili & Stephany, Fabian, 2021. "How Many Online Workers are there in the World? A Data-Driven Assessment," SocArXiv 78nge, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:78nge
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/78nge
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    1. Kässi, Otto & Lehdonvirta, Vili, 2018. "Online labour index: Measuring the online gig economy for policy and research," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 241-248.
    2. Ogembo, Daisy & Lehdonvirta, Vili, 2020. "Taxing Earnings from the Platform Economy: An EU Digital Single Window for Income Data?," OSF Preprints 67wdy, Center for Open Science.
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    6. Stephany, Fabian & Dunn, Michael & Sawyer, Steven & Lehdonvirta, Vili, 2020. "Distancing Bonus or Downscaling Loss? The Changing Livelihood of US Online Workers in Times of COVID-19," SocArXiv vmg34, Center for Open Science.
    7. Katharine G. Abraham & John C. Haltiwanger & Kristin Sandusky & James R. Spletzer, 2017. "Measuring the Gig Economy: Current Knowledge and Open Issues," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century, pages 257-298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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    Cited by:

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    3. Lars Hornuf & Daniel Vrankar, 2022. "Hourly Wages in Crowdworking: A Meta-Analysis," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 64(5), pages 553-573, October.
    4. Kazakova, E. & Sandomirskaia, M. & Suvorov, A. & Khazhgerieva, A. & Shavshin, R., 2023. "Platforms, online labor markets, and crowdsourcing. Part 1. Traditional online labor market," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 120-148.
    5. Miray Erinc Oztas, 2024. "Migrant Women in the UK’s Digital Economy: The Elimination of Labour Market Barriers in the Digital Labour Market," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-12, September.
    6. Paola Tubaro, 2022. "Learners in the loop: hidden human skills in machine intelligence," Post-Print hal-03787017, HAL.
    7. Ostoj Izabela, 2024. "Platform-mediated work in Poland: Worker characteristics and prevalence in society," International Journal of Management and Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of World Economy, vol. 60(2), pages 132-146.
    8. Stephany, Fabian & Teutloff, Ole, 2024. "What is the price of a skill? The value of complementarity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(1).
    9. Ozge Demirci & Jonas Hannane & Xinrong Zhu, 2024. "Who Is AI Replacing? The Impact of Generative AI on Online Freelancing Platforms," CESifo Working Paper Series 11276, CESifo.
    10. Chiara Belletti & Daniel Erdsiek & Ulrich Laitenberger & Paola Tubaro, 2021. "Crowdworking in France and Germany," Working Papers hal-03468022, HAL.
    11. Fabian Stephany & Otto Kassi & Uma Rani & Vili Lehdonvirta, 2021. "Online Labour Index 2020: New ways to measure the world's remote freelancing market," Papers 2105.09148, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2021.
    12. Oleg Bazaluk & Muhammad Ataur Rahman & Nurul Mohammad Zayed & Md. Faisal-E-Alam & Vitalii Nitsenko & Lesia Kucher, 2024. "Crowdsourcing review: the crowd workers’ perspective," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 51(3), pages 647-666, September.
    13. Al James, 2024. "Platform work‐lives in the gig economy: Recentering work–family research," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 513-534, March.
    14. Daniel Erdsiek, 2021. "Unternehmen setzen verstärkt auf Crowdworking [Companies increasingly rely on crowdworking]," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 101(11), pages 912-914, November.

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