Lean platform workers are highly educated yet forced by unemployment into gig work

Evidence

In this context, self-employment is not a freely chosen path, but rather a forced imposition. A look at the demographics of lean platform workers seems to support this. Of the workers on TaskRabbit, 70 per cent have Bachelor’s degrees, while 5 per cent have PhDs. An International Labour Organization (ILO) survey found that workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (AMT) also tend to be highly educated, 37 per cent using crowd work as their main job. And Uber admits that around a third of its drivers in London come from neighbourhoods with unemployment rates of more than 10 per cent. In a healthy economy these people would have no need to be microtasking, as they would have proper jobs. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 71

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with the ‘liberation/flexibility’ framing of the sharing economy and with Zuboff’s emphasis on behavioral surplus rather than labour precarity. — connects to: Gig-economy liberation rhetoric masks new and deeper labor exploitation — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 225; Unemployment functions as a deliberate worker-discipline device — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 18; The labor periphery splits into career-stalled full-timers and precariously casual workers — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 888 (+3 more)
• SHARE: The TaskRabbit stat — 70 per cent Bachelor’s / 5 per cent PhDs — would interest a labour-economics friend.

Related

• Lean platforms outsource non-tradable jobs globally and shift capital costs onto workers (similarity 0.81)
• Gig-economy liberation rhetoric masks new and deeper labor exploitation (similarity 0.80)
• Contemporary jobseekers conceal unemployment behind performative activity unlike their 1980s counterparts (similarity 0.80)
• Lean platforms only profit from frequent, low-skill, non-trainable tasks (similarity 0.78)
• The contractor framing of gig work mainly benefits employers, not workers (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Unemployment functions as a deliberate worker-discipline device #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 18
• Gig-economy liberation rhetoric masks new and deeper labor exploitation #corroborates (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 225
• Fear of unemployment disciplines workers into subordination to capital. #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 250
• The labor periphery splits into career-stalled full-timers and precariously casual workers #expands (0.72) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 888
• Unemployment serves as discipline that keeps employed workers docile and grateful #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 282