IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/78nge_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Kässi, Otto & Lehdonvirta, Vili & Stephany, Fabian, 2021. "How Many Online Workers are there in the World? A Data-Driven Assessment," SocArXiv 78nge_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:78nge_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/78nge_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/605a0b1b5717460076e66901/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/78nge_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Jason Chan & Jing Wang, 2018. "Hiring Preferences in Online Labor Markets: Evidence of a Female Hiring Bias," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(7), pages 2973-2994, July.
    3. 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.
    4. Siou Chew Kuek & Cecilia Paradi-Guilford & Toks Fayomi & Saori Imaizumi & Panos Ipeirotis & Patricia Pina & Manpreet Singh, 2015. "The Global Opportunity in Online Outsourcing," World Bank Publications - Reports 22284, The World Bank Group.
    5. Melia, Elvis, 2020. "African jobs in the digital era: Export options with a focus on online labour," IDOS Discussion Papers 3/2020, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    6. Paola Tubaro & Clément Le Ludec & Antonio A. Casilli, 2020. "Counting ‘micro-workers’: societal and methodological challenges around new forms of labour," Post-Print hal-02898905, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Otto Kassi & Vili Lehdonvirta & Fabian Stephany, 2021. "How Many Online Workers are there in the World? A Data-Driven Assessment," Papers 2103.12648, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2021.
    2. Chiara Belletti & Daniel Erdsiek & Ulrich Laitenberger & Paola Tubaro, 2021. "Crowdworking in France and Germany," Working Papers hal-03468022, HAL.
    3. Evangelos Mourelatos & Manolis Tzagarakis, 2018. "An investigation of factors affecting the visits of online crowdsourcing and labor platforms," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 95-130, December.
    4. Nwaobi, Godwin, 2024. "Gig Sector in the African Economy: Frameworks, Challenges and Prospects," MPRA Paper 120532, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. 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.
    6. Bas Scheer & Wiljan van den Berge & Maarten Goos & Alan Manning & Anna Salomons, 2022. "Alternative Work Arrangements and Worker Outcomes: Evidence from Payrolling," CPB Discussion Paper 435, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    7. Andrey SHEVCHUK & Denis STREBKOV, 2023. "Digital platforms and the changing freelance workforce in the Russian Federation: A ten‐year perspective," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 162(1), pages 1-22, March.
    8. Jose Asturias & Emin Dinlersoz & John Haltiwanger & Rebecca Hutchinson & Alyson Plumb, 2021. "Business Applications as a Leading Economic Indicator?," Working Papers 21-09, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    9. Joshua Greenstein, 2020. "The Precariat Class Structure and Income Inequality among US Workers: 1980–2018," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 447-469, September.
    10. John C. Haltiwanger, 2022. "Entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the Business Formation Statistics," Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 9-42.
    11. Joshua D. Gottlieb & Avi Zenilman, 2020. "When Workers Travel: Nursing Supply During COVID-19 Surges," NBER Working Papers 28240, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Christine Mayrhuber & Julia Bock-Schappelwein, 2018. "Digitalisierung und soziale Sicherheit," WIFO Monatsberichte (monthly reports), WIFO, vol. 91(12), pages 891-897, December.
    13. Maho Hatayama & Dagmara Maj-Swistak, 2024. "The Regulation of Platform-Based Work," World Bank Publications - Reports 42358, The World Bank Group.
    14. Olena Kostyshyna & Etienne Lalé, 2022. "On the evolution of multiple jobholding in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(2), pages 1095-1134, May.
    15. Andres Drenik & Simon Jager & Pascuel Plotkin & Benjamin Schoefer, 2023. "Paying Outsourced Labor: Direct Evidence from Linked Temp Agency-Worker-Client Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(1), pages 206-216, January.
    16. Lynn Riggs & Isabelle Sin & Dean Hyslop, 2019. "Measuring the “gig” economy: Challenges and options," Working Papers 19_18, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    17. DILI Ramces & BUNCAD Yve Joerella & PEREZ Yveth Jasmin, 2022. "Bpo Industry In Achieving Socio-Economic Development Inclusiveness And Local Governance In The Philippines," Management of Sustainable Development, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 14(2), pages 22-26, December.
    18. Ali-Yrkkö, Jyrki & Koski, Heli & Kässi, Otto & Pajarinen, Mika & Valkonen, Tarmo & Hokkanen, Marja & Hyvönen, Noora & Koivusalo, Elina & Laaksonen, Jarno & Laitinen, Juha & Nyström, Enni, 2020. "The Size of the Digital Economy in Finland and Its Impact on Taxation," ETLA Reports 106, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    19. James Browne & Herwig Immervoll, 2017. "Mechanics of replacing benefit systems with a basic income: comparative results from a microsimulation approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(4), pages 325-344, December.
    20. Dmitri Koustas, 2020. "Insights from New Tax-Based Measures of Gig Work in the United States," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 21(03), pages 5-9, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:78nge_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.