A starting point reference In US, the unemployment rate, currently at roughly 5%, peaked after the 2007–2008 financial crisis at 10% in October 2009. Many individuals stopped seeking employment and have increasingly looked to make money in what is sometimes referred to as the “gig economy.”

GIG Economy The gig economy is an environment in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements. (including uberisation) According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in October 2016, more than 15 million people in the U.S. designated their status as “self-employed.” Moreover, 53 million individuals reported doing freelance work in the U.S. in 2016, representing 34% of the workforce. A study by Intuit(2016) predicted that by 2020, 40 percent of American workers would be independent contractors. (link with Guilhem presentation).

Main forces behind the rise in short-term jobs . Digitalization In this digital age, the workforce is increasingly mobile and work can increasingly be done from anywhere, so that job and location are decoupled. has also contributed directly to a decrease in jobs as software replaces some types of work and means that others take much less time Freelancers can select among temporary jobs and projects around the world Employers can select the best individuals for specific projects from a larger pool than that available in any given area. 2. Financial pressures on businesses leading to further staff reductions. In a gig economy, businesses save resources in terms of benefits, office space and training. They also have the ability to contract with experts for specific projects who might be too high-priced to maintain on staff 3. Entrance of the Milennial generation into the workforce. The current reality is that people tend to changes jobs several times throughout their working lives; A gig economy can improve work-life balance over what is possible in most jobs. Ideally, the model is powered by independent workers selecting jobs that they're interested in, rather than one in which people are forced into a position where, unable to attain employment, they pick up whatever temporary gigs they can land.

Flexibility In the gig economy, instead of a regular wage, workers get paid for the "gigs" they do, such as a food delivery or a car journey. In the UK it's estimated that five million people are employed in this type of capacity. Jobs include couriers, ride-hailing drivers and video producers. Proponents of the gig economy claim that people can benefit from flexible hours, with control over how much time they can work as they juggle other priorities in their lives. In addition, the flexible nature often offers benefits to employers, as they only pay when the work is available, and don't incur staff costs when the demand is not there. Meanwhile, workers in the gig economy are classed as independent contractors. That means they have no protection against unfair dismissal, no right to redundancy payments, and no right to receive the national minimum wage, paid holiday or sickness pay

Flexible Workers and Employment Regulation The use of contractors rather than employees is a common feature of recent on-demand service businesses. Because businesses such as Instacart, Postmates, Uber, or TaskRabbit run spot markets where workers are hired by the job, they are not subject to employment regulations, nor are they required to provide bene.ts such as health or disability insurance. While these businesses are a tiny fraction of the overall labor market, the idea that contract work and piece rates might encroach on long-term employment relationships is potentially very controversial Commissioner ruled that an Uber driver was technically an employee of Uber. Some workers may value having flexible hours (Hall and Krueger, 2015). In other cases, variability in demand favors flexible work arrangements. Moreover, in a competitive labor market, a business that others contract work must compete with stable employment, so piece rates must compensate for any lack of associated benefits. At the same time, however, employment regulations often are justified on the grounds that market forces do not sufficiently protect workers, something that did not enter into our model of peer production.

Conclusion Concerning the impact of collaborative platforms on employment and work In France, we can observe a great diversity of the statuses of the collaborative workers who contribute to the platforms. Employees are more present than generally imagined. The self-employed are not surprisingly numerous among the contributors, but there are two common misconceptions: the current growth of collaborative self-employment does not signal a "wage end" in France or the United States; And the situations of economic dependence of self-employed collaborators are not yet frequent enough to adopt an ad hoc status of self-employed person. Uber case. Available datas suggest that the impact of collaborative platforms on the volume of employment should not be overestimated. Collaborative platforms have a few thousand own employees only (2,500 is a minority) and collaborative workers represent only about 200,000 people in France, excluding second-hand sales and hosting. Their growth is nonetheless rapid because the platforms are a source of gross job creation. Their impact on the jobs of traditional firms is, unfortunately, not precisely documented or univocal. The impact of employment platforms on the functioning of the labor market is mixed and also very poorly understood. Platforms certainly increase the structural tendency towards more flexibility in the labor market, but they are also a major factor in the integration of people far from employment and disadvantaged social groups.

Labour market regulation to sharing economy platforms People working for providers should be allowed to remain self-employed, and platforms should be enabled (and in some cases, encouraged) to develop their own means of supplying other benefits besides cash remuneration. A remaining issue is whether providers should be considered employees of platforms. Exploratory avenues to answer this question could be to: − mandate that all sharing economy service providers are platform employees, − create a new employment status of 'sharing economy service provider', − avoid extensive roles for employers in public welfare provision, − encourage or facilitate platforms in developing their own user benefits, − extend insurance and other financial markets.