In recent years, there has been a focus on so-called “gig” economy jobs, by which people, often working as independent contractors, perform services utilizing various technology platforms to help put them in contact with customers or clients. Conventional wisdom has been that these jobs have increased at the expense of jobs that more closely conform to the traditional employee-employer relationship and that worker security, pay, and benefits are all suffering as a result.
In an effort to measure the size of the gig economy workforce, the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently decided to update its report on Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements, which was last produced in 2005. Importantly, BLS used the same measures examined in the 2005 survey in an effort to compare apples to apples.
Surprisingly, despite the conventional wisdom, the data actually show a slight decrease in the percentage of the workforce that identifies as either an independent contractor or contingent worker since the last BLS report in 2005.
A copy of the BLS analysis is available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.