In 2017, over half of the world’s population will have joined the Internet. Many of these three and a half billion connected people will look to so-called ‘online labour platforms’, such as Freelancer.com and Fiverr, for work. These platforms allow workers to escape some of the constraints of their local labour markets and find work that they might not otherwise have been able to obtain.

This same ability for clients – potentially located anywhere in the world- to access labour power – also potentially located anywhere – has created a $5 billion market for online work that is served by 48 million workers. In the UK 11% of the labour force earn income from what has become known as the gig economy and 3% do so regularly. Online labour platforms connect individual workers with clients to carry out a wide range of contingent digital projects ranging from data entry to software programming. The Online Labour Index measures the utilisation of online labour platforms and suggests that their use is growing at an annual rate of 36 percent. It has even been suggested that within the next decade, labour platforms will mediate one in three labour transactions.

With colleagues at the Oxford Internet Institute we carried out face-to-face interviews with over 220 online gig workers in the UK, US, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana and we also surveyed a further 450 workers from throughout Southeast Asian and Sub-Saharan African. One of our aims has been to investigate whether these online labour platforms are a force for good or whether they are in fact harmful for workers.

We found a number of ways in which online labour platforms were beneficial for workers. For instance, many of the participants had earned more than they would otherwise have been able to in their local labour market. Our interviews and survey data also highlight how these platforms made it possible for workers to access jobs which entailed a high level of autonomy and discretion. Moreover, many workers enjoyed the daily variation created by being able to choose different projects to work on. In fact, the work is often experienced as stimulating, interesting and enriching and involving complex tasks which require a degree of problem-solving. Workers also tend to value the potential flexibility over when and where the work is undertaken. However, in reality, this flexibility can be limited by the need to be available at those times which suit clients (who are often in different time-zones) and by having little choice but to work from their home.

Although online labour platforms have the potential to provide workers with the above benefits, organising work in this way also places a huge amount power over workers into the hands of platforms. Our research finds that workers are often dependent on a single platform for their livelihood and would find it hard to make ends meet without the work it provides. That workers frequently become dependent on a single platform can be explained by two process.

First, like other platforms, such as Facebook, online labour platforms benefit from positive network effects. This is a phenomenon whereby each additional user increases the benefits of the platform for all users. For example, a social media or auction platform is of more value to its users the more users there are. In this case, each additional client and worker increases the benefit of being on the platform for all users by increasing the absolute demand for workers and the total supply of skills.