Working in the gig economy

The motivations of demand economy contractors are varied and not without suspicion towards the services that employ them.

Just what do people think about the on-demand, or gig, economy? A survey by public relations company Burston-Marsteller looked at those who use and provide services for companies like Uber, AirBnB and Instagram.

Unsurprisingly the majority of users are have positive experiences with on-demand services which allows them to access product they couldn’t afford otherwise.

More important are the views of the contractors, and those who are doing these jobs for the flexibility are matched by those who’d rather have full time employment but can’t find a role.

Strikingly, the longer a contractor has worked for one of these services the more likely they are to find the company’s practices exploitative and more than half believe the platforms are gaming the regulations.

Overall, it shows participants in the ‘sharing economy’ have no illusions about the caring aspects of the services that employ them, unlike many of those touting the benefits from the sidelines.

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Author: Paul Wallbank

Paul Wallbank is a speaker and writer charting how technology is changing society and business. Paul has four regular technology advice radio programs on ABC, a weekly column on the smartcompany.com.au website and has published seven books.

One thought on “Working in the gig economy”

  1. “More important are the views of the contractors, and those who are doing these jobs for the flexibility are matched by those who’d rather have full time employment but can’t find a role.”

    Alternatively, this suggests that workers haven’t fully-embraced the transition to the new gig economy or haven’t worked out how they move up the value curve. Nobody leaves school thinking “I really want to be a taxi driver”. Similarly, no young taxi driver thinks “this is great, I’ll do this for the next 40 years”.

    I’m not suggesting the Ubers or the other “gig” employers aren’t making a big buck but, if their drivers didn’t think it was an improvement on the massive entry cost to the taxi cartel of Sydney (for example), they wouldn’t be driving but pulling pints in the RSL or cleaning houses, etc.

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