Measuring the Gig Economy is Not Easy

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the results of their Electronically Mediated Work study.

They found about 1% of the U.S. workforce used an online labor platform during their reference week in May of 2017.

This works out to about 1.6 million people.

They also found their survey questions "did not work as intended" and resulted in a large number of false positives.

Because of this, they had to “recode” their data using a labor-intensive process. (See their study for the details.) They believe this process fixed many of the problems.

The false positive problem – meaning people say they do something in response to a survey question when they don’t – is a common problem with gig surveys for two broad reasons.

First, many people confuse working with online tools in a traditional job with working in the gig economy. This seems to be the main issue the BLS had.

The second driver of false positives comes from aspirational questions in surveys.  Whenever people are about things that are popular or considered cool (like working in the gig economy), many people say they are doing it even if they’re not.

A good example of the false positive problem is asking people whether they plan to start a business over the next 2-3 years. We ask this question in the MBO State of Independence study. Consistently over the past 8 years of this study, about 12% - 14% of Americas say they will. Yet in reality, only about 1%-2% actually start a business.

The best way to avoid these false positive problems is by asking a series of clarifying questions to screen out the false positives. But for a variety of reasons, which are explained in the BLS study results, the BLS was unable to do this and was limited to asking just 4 questions.

But even asking a series of questions -- which is how we do it -- doesn’t guarantee the false positive problem won’t happen.  It does, however, help mitigate problems that arise.

The bottom line is measuring the gig economy is not easy. Or as the Wall Street Journal put it in their article on the BLS study, “A government survey designed to measure the gig economy shows just how challenging that can be”.

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