Platform Work and Economic Insecurity: Evidence from Representative Italian Survey Data

The emergence of the platform economy has served as a defining feature of increasingly fragmented labour markets. Recent research on platform work, however, has struggled to quantify the economic conditions of platform workers relative to other occupations and to determine whether the economic disadvantages of platform workers are primarily channelled through lower incomes or other dimensions of precarity. This study uses representative survey data of platform workers in Italy to investigate their size, composition, and economic insecurity. We find that platform workers face greater economic insecurity relative to all other occupation classes, and a rate of economic insecurity that is not significantly different from that of unemployed adults. Higher levels of insecurity are not primarily channelled through lower incomes; instead, higher rates of insecurity persist when accounting for family incomes, suggesting that other dimensions of precarity associated with platform work matter as much as income differences in shaping economic insecurity.