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

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  • Otto Kassi
  • Vili Lehdonvirta
  • Fabian Stephany

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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  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2103.12648
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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. 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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    4. 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.
    5. Fabian Stephany & Michael Dunn & Steven Sawyer & Vili Lehdonvirta, 2020. "Distancing Bonus Or Downscaling Loss? The Changing Livelihood of Us Online Workers in Times of COVID‐19," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 111(3), pages 561-573, July.
    6. John Horton & William R. Kerr & Christopher Stanton, 2017. "Digital Labor Markets and Global Talent Flows," NBER Chapters, in: High-Skilled Migration to the United States and Its Economic Consequences, pages 71-108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. 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).
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
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    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Chiara Belletti & Daniel Erdsiek & Ulrich Laitenberger & Paola Tubaro, 2021. "Crowdworking in France and Germany," Working Papers hal-03468022, HAL.
    3. 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.
    4. Silva, Victo J. & Chiarini, Tulio & Ribeiro, Leonardo Costa, 2022. "The Brazilian digital platform economy: a first approach," SocArXiv d478v, Center for Open Science.
    5. Paola Tubaro, 2022. "Learners in the loop: hidden human skills in machine intelligence," Post-Print hal-03787017, HAL.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.

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