1. CESS 2018 Measuring employment* through a social survey
*(in digital markets)
Stylianos Zachariou

2. Recently in the news…
"In 2017, around 0.3 per cent of Finns aged 15 to 74 years had earned at least one-quarter of their income through various digital platforms during the previous 12 months. In numbers, this involves around 14,000 persons" (Statistics Finland)
"57 Million U.S. Workers Are Part Of The Gig Economy" (
"In August, the travel marketplace AirBnb will turn ten years old – marking a major milestone for the Sharing Economy. These platforms have now grown into a massive, global industry facilitating hundreds of millions of transactions every day"  (Why The Sharing Economy Still Hasn't Reached Its Potential, /sites/)

3. more news...
"In the UK 21% have looked for jobs (9 million), 11% have worked at least once (4.9 million), 4% work every month (1.8 million), and 3% every 22 week (1.3 million) through platforms." (Huws & Joyce, 2016b)
In the year that ended in June 2018, some 2 million projects were created on Upwork’s platform ...it currently has some 375,000 freelancers and 475,000 clients registered on its platform" (Data provided by Upwork before its Initial Public Offering)
Rapid technological change, consisting principally in growing use of digital technologies, creates new economic activities that need to be covered by statistics. The expanding so-called "sharing economy" is an example of a newly created business model that needs to be reflected in statistics” (Position paper of the European Statistical System Committee)

4. How many people are working in the sharing economy?
It seems a simple question, but the previous short collection of news reveals a number of important issues:
Terms like sharing economy, gig economy, digital platforms, or freelancer market place are used to describe various “activities” (or businesses, or markets…) while a clear and unambiguous (and general agreed) definition of these terms is still missing.
Estimations for the number of persons working in sharing economy exist, but they vary widely – as well as what part of sharing economy is measured or what is defined as “work in sharing economy”

5. Current estimations
Current estimations on the number of persons involved (working/gaining income) in sharing economy are based mainly on the following types of sources
Estimations based on data provided by platforms
Estimations provided by “general” social surveys
Estimations using big-data
Estimations provided by specialized surveys

6. Main issues with the current sources
Different surveys may use different definitions, or “target” populations.
Platforms may have a motive not to disclose accurate data
Surveys are implemented in selected countries, and do not provide results at European (or international) level
The relation between these estimations and the “official” estimation of employment is not clear

7. What would be the desirable characteristics of a survey measuring employment in sharing economy?
To be able to identify an internet activity as work or employment (or none of them)
To provide criteria for including an activity in sharing, platform, or gig economy
To provide information on the “traditional” employment characteristics
To provide information about the engagement (current or past) in "traditional" employment
To provide information on the main socio-demographic characteristics of the persons involved in such activities

8. Work or employment? The 19th ILO Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization identifies five mutually exclusive forms of work

9. Activities in sharing economy can fall in any of these five categories – or can be outside of any form of work
The same activity, depending on the circumstances, can be categorized in different forms of work – or even as not work
There is no single factor to determine if an activity is work (or employment). Sometimes, even the existence of compensation is not enough

10. The example of renting a property
Person rents a propery
The owner advertises the property in a Facebook group.
The property is leased for 2 months. Tenant contacted the owner directly
Income from capital
The property is listed in Booking.com. It is leased for 2 months
Employment (not included in gig economy)
The property is listed in Airbnb. It is leased for 2 months
Income from capital/Employment included in gig economy

11. Employment characteristics
For any activity characterized as employment, information on sector, occupation and status in employment should be provided.
Though, in principle, the same rules as in more “traditional” types of employment should apply, these new forms of employment and especially, employment for digital platforms, pose some serious challenges

12. Employment status
Evidence from available surveys (e.g., COLLEEM survey) indicate that a large majority of the persons that are involved in digital platform activities report that they consider themselves as employees – something that contradicts the fact that the providers of labour services via platforms are formally considered (by the platforms) as independent contractors
This is an indication that the employment status of platform workers is unclear even to the workers themselves.
We should add that there are important legal issues connected to the same problem (for example, court cases against Crowdflower, Lyft and Uber in US)

13. Economic sector Occupation
The issue of allocating an internet activity – and especially employment in a digital platform – into a certain sector of economy can be also controversial.
Two of the main issues are:
There is strong evidence that platform workers provide more than one type of services, and are active on two or more platforms
If the platforms workers are considered as employees of the platform, it can be argued that they should be classified the same way as people working in temporary employment agencies
Occupation
As in the case of economic sector, the fact that platform workers provide more than one type of services, complicates the classification of their occupation

14. Socio-Demographic characteristics
It is important to be able to classify persons involved in sharing economy activities under various important dimensions:
Age and sex
Educational level
Household composition
Work experience
As a result, the sample size of such a survey should be large enough in order to allow a meaningful and valid analysis – especially in cases where the number of persons involved is relatively small

15. Household/individual surveys already implemented and plans for the future
The COLLEEM survey: a stand-alone survey that was implemented in 14 EU Member States, asking the respondents if they have ever gained income from different online sources
Various countries (for example, Finland, Denmark) have already piloted questions on participation in sharing economy. In most cases, these questions were incorporated in the national Labour Force Survey

16. The same exercise is planned by other countries (France, Italy, Switzerland) – again as a module of the Labour Force Survey
Eurostat will:
Set up a Task Force to prepare a pilot data collection at EU level (within the EU-LFS) including definition of collaborative/gig economy, development of variables/questions and characteristics of the pilot
Implementation of the pilot data collection between 2021 and 2023 in view of a possible implementation in the LFS in 2026