New information on gig economy

Late last year, I noted that there was a marked rise in the number of self-employed taxi operators (i.e. uber drivers) such that the Australian economy was becoming more a gig economy than a start-up economy.

New data in US, reported by the WSJ, suggests that there was an over-estimation of the impacts of the gig economy. Basically, the gig economy was a temporary function of the post-recession low employment rather than a permanent shift to a new form of employment. Also the amount of people involved in non-traditional (gig) economy was 2% rather than 5% as was originally reported. The reduction in the importance of gig economy comes at at time when two big players, Uber and Lyft, are tying to go public.

Interestingly, the new data suggests that gig economy jobs might be a useful indicator of the relative employment of people. So, increases in the registration of gig economy sole-operators might indicate that there is growing unemployment or under-employment in Australia. A growing gig economy might indicate a worsening job market.

We will have to wait until February 2019 for the July 2014 – June 2018 to compare company registration data to economic data.

(Interesting note: people are more likely to note that their spouses have secondary jobs than their own secondary jobs – some form of shame or embarassment? This creates survey non-reporting errors.)