IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/ijlaec/v68y2025i2d10.1007_s41027-024-00536-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Employment Shares across Occupations in the Online Labour Market

Author

Listed:
  • Deepa Kylasam Iyer

    (Cornell University)

  • Francis Kuriakose

    (Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI))

Abstract

The online labour market is much less understood than traditional labour markets in terms of demand and supply of labour. In this context, this study explores how service occupations are distributed according to their employment share in online labour markets. Using decomposition analysis of the data from the online labour index database, we argue that the average employment share of service occupations displays job polarisation along the same lines as that of their onsite counterparts. Two implications follow from this finding. First, online gig work involving middle-skill occupations such as clerical, administrative, production and operation tasks grow at a slower pace than high- and low-skill service occupations. While clerical and administrative jobs are likely to be outsourced to geographies with cheap labour, production and operation tasks get automated. Second, high-skill online gigs such as technical and professional jobs display an unprecedented degree of informalisation. Both these implications change our perspectives about skill building and education because of the erosion of wage premiums associated with college education.

Suggested Citation

  • Deepa Kylasam Iyer & Francis Kuriakose, 2025. "Employment Shares across Occupations in the Online Labour Market," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 68(2), pages 493-509, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ijlaec:v:68:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s41027-024-00536-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s41027-024-00536-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41027-024-00536-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s41027-024-00536-y?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gig work; Automation; Outsourcing; Job polarisation; Online labour market;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J46 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Informal Labor Market

    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:spr:ijlaec:v:68:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s41027-024-00536-y. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.