Understanding the Platform Economy

Keele’s inaugural MMO seminar hosted Professor Chris Forde to present his work, with colleagues from Leeds University Business School and The Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation, into the dynamics, experience and social protections offered to platform economy workers.

The study, funded by the European Parliament, surveyed 1,200 platform workers drawn from Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), Clickworker, CrowdFlower and Microworkers.

Using Latent Class Analysis of the survey data, the team were able to draw distinctions between what they term ‘Moderate Beneficiaries’ (MDs)(37% of the sample), Random Surfers (RSs (38%) and Platform Dependent Workers (PDW) (25%).

MDs are most likely to have jobs outside of the platform economy, infrequently use platform work as an income supplement. RSs are the most independent from the platform economy and were most likely to have another job (95%). PDWs are likely to derive a high percentage of their economy from the gig economy and are heavily reliant on it as a critical source of income.

A key takeaway from the seminar is that, despite the existing of Socal Protections across the EU, up to 70 per cent of respondent said they could not obtain housing, childcare or maternity protections. Restrictions to access result from low levels of hours or income which means that many platformers don’t make protection thresholds. The problem is particularly acute for workers dependent on platform work.

The full consequences of the platform economy for workers is partially offset for those workers who have other jobs as, in many cases, they access essential protection through alternative employment.

A useful summary of research is available here.