Journal article

How many online workers are there in the world? A data-driven assessment

Abstract:: An unknown number of people around the world are earning income by working through online labour platforms such as Upwork and Amazon Mechanical Turk. We combine data collected from various sources to build a data-driven assessment of the number of such online workers (also known as online freelancers) globally. Our headline estimate is that there are 163 million freelancer profiles registered on online labour platforms globally. Approximately 14 million of them have obtained work through the platform at least once, and 3.3 million have completed at least 10 projects or earned at least $1000. These numbers suggest a substantial growth from 2015 in registered worker accounts, but much less growth in amount of work completed by workers. Our results indicate that online freelancing represents a non-trivial segment of labour today, but one that is spread thinly across countries and sectors.

Publication status:: Published

Peer review status:: Peer reviewed

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APA Style

Kässi, O., Lehdonvirta, V., & Stephany, F. (2021). How many online workers are there in the world? A data-driven assessment . Open Research Europe, 1.

MLA Style

Kässi, O, et al. “How Many Online Workers Are There in the World? A Data-Driven Assessment .” Open Research Europe, vol. 1, 2021.

Chicago Style

Kässi, O, V Lehdonvirta, and F Stephany. 2021. “How Many Online Workers Are There in the World? A Data-Driven Assessment .” Open Research Europe 1.
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Files:: Kassi_et_al_2021_How_many_online.pdf

(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.2MB, Terms of use)

Publisher copy:: 10.12688/openreseurope.13639.4

Authors

+ Kässi, O More by this author

Role:: Author
ORCID:: 0000-0002-8666-200X

+ Lehdonvirta, V More by this author

Institution:: University of Oxford
Division:: SSD
Department:: Oxford Internet Institute
Role:: Author
ORCID:: 0000-0002-6509-1703

+ Stephany, F More by this author

Institution:: University of Oxford
Division:: SSD
Department:: Oxford Internet Institute
Role:: Author

Publisher:: European Commission
Journal:: Open Research Europe More from this journal
Volume:: 1
Article number:: 53
Publication date:: 2021-05-19
Acceptance date:: 2021-10-15
DOI:: 10.12688/openreseurope.13639.4
EISSN:: 2732-5121

Language:: English
Keywords:: online labour markets

FFR

platform economy

gig work
Pubs id:: 1169667
Local pid:: pubs:1169667
Deposit date:: 2021-06-24
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_30ae5cda71ac44c5a0fa5ebc1ee1875b

Terms of use

Copyright holder:: Kässi et al.
Copyright date:: 2021
Rights statement:: Copyright: © 2021 Kässi O et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Licence:: CC Attribution (CC BY)

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