Colloquium Series: Michael Dunn

Making Gigs Work: Workers, Platforms and Labor Market Strategies

Technological advancements have always changed both the demand for certain types of workers and the nature of the employer-employee relationship. In the last decade, increases in internet availability and the meteoric rise of smartphone technology have caused a digital evolution of work that has led to the rise of the “gig economy”.  The gig economy is generally characterized by short-term engagements among employers, workers and customers.  In this sense, the gig economy is not new. Instead, it represents a digital version of the offline atypical, casual, freelance, or contingent work arrangements characteristic of much of the economy prior to the middle of the 20th century and that have reappeared in the past thirty years.  What differentiates work in the gig economy is that it operates in a new work ecosystem that is managed by online platforms, which broker work between employers and workers. The exemplars of these platforms, Uber and Upwork, rely entirely on technology to facilitate work.   This project investigates the consequences of contingent work in light of the new online platforms that broker work between employers and workers. Workers in this new gig economy have little to no connection to their employer and the jobs don’t offer predictable hours, wages, fringe benefits, or clear promotion paths. The findings uncover how workers navigate this new work arrangement and how it impacts them. Drawing from 50 in-depth interviews, I introduce a typology of “gig worker” that demarcates how this work arrangement is being used. My analysis reveals a bifurcated population of workers in which job quality varies depending on factors of employment.