Exploring the Gig Economy Using a Web-Based Survey: Measuring the Online 'and' Offline Side Work-for-Pay Activity+

• Activity Number: 186
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2016 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Government Statistics Section
• Author(s): Barbara J. Robles and Marysol G. McGee*
• Companies: Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Board
• Keywords: 1099 economy ; low-income oversample ; Web-based surveys ; informal work ; internet panel recruitment ; gig economy

Abstract

Given the ongoing changes to the alternative, informal and contingent work arrangements of many American workers, the usual employment data sources such as the CPS and the CES are limited in measuring the new emergence of 'gig' and 'supplemental' work. Employing a national internet panel of 18 year old and over survey respondents from the GfK-KnowledgePanel® (a proprietary, probability-based web panel of more than 50,000 individuals from randomly sampled households), we explore survey representativeness between general population respondents and an oversample of low-to-moderate income respondents (less than $40K annually). We capture side work activity occurring online such as the incidence of selling goods (used and new) as well as services (ie., walking the dog, babysitting, and house cleaning). Our analysis of the 'and' between on-line/off-line work-for-pay includes: How big (volume) and how common (frequent) are occasional or 'gig' work for typical Americans? and What are the correlations between the 'spatial' and 'digital' pay-for-work activities? The data are a post-stratified weighted and unweighted snap-shot of 2,483 survey respondents.