It's been a busy couple of weeks for gig economy studies. Below is a list of 4 of the recently released studies.
1. Want Your Business to Thrive - Cultivate Your External Talent: The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Success Factors teamed up for study, which surveyed independent workers, managers who hire independent works and HR employees.
The goal of the study was to get a 360 view of external labor use by businesses. And, overall, they've accomplished that goal.
But we admit we laughed out loud when we read their press release.
Their big finding is it's a myth that most independent workers aren't doing independent work because they can't find a job. They also found - and it apparently shocked them - that independent workers like the flexibility and autonomy they have.
These findings have, of course, been known for many years. But it's nice to see the HR world catching up.
2. Platform Work in the UK 2016-2019: This study is a collaboration between the University of Hertfordshire and the U.K.'s Trades Union Congress (TUC). It found the number of people in the U.K. doing gig economy work has doubled over the last three years.
And as the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), about 10% of UK residents report using a gig platform for work on a weekly basis and almost 30% are seeking work using these platforms.
The study also found the majority of people using online platforms to find work are working part-time to supplement their income. The study report has lots of interesting data on UK gig workers.
3. Freelance Economic Impact Report: Fiverr and Rockbridge Associates teamed on this study.
Using data from the U.S. Census non-employer dataset, the study explores the size, growth and skills of the specialized knowledge worker population across the 25 largest U.S. metropolitan areas.
This is one of the few studies that provides a city level look at independent work. It's also one of the few focused only on knowledge workers.
4. How Well Are Independent Workers Prepared for Retirement?: From the Pew Charitable Trust, this is really an essay instead of a study.
We're including it because it contains data on gig workers in general as well as data related to gig worker retirement savings.
The key point of the essay is we need more data on the gig economy, something we definitely agree with.
The gig economy is clearly a hot topic, but it's also a complex topic. So it's good to see the growth in studies in this area.
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