How giant Is The Gig economy? the government Is ultimately Going to find Out

The gig financial system has launched a wholesome “future of labor” panel circuit amid a roaring debate over whether or not apps like Uber, Postmates, and handy—which hire an army of impartial contractors as an alternative of employees—characterize a return to the sweatshop or a brand new freedom to work when and the way one pleases. but all sides of the talk face the same dilemma: when they advise a brand new policy or launch a new initiative, they have best a obscure concept of what number of staff it may well impression. there is not any current government information that particularly catalogs this group of workers.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez announced plans to resolve this problem by using counting workers who labor outside the normal construction of full-time employment. The survey of what the government calls “contingent workers” will be a complement to the may just 2017 current population survey.

The department of Labor ran this contingent worker survey often except 2005, when it was once defunded via Congress. With handiest decade-previous executive data about this working inhabitants, proposed solutions for “gig staff” have in this case relied on inflated 0.33-birthday celebration surveys, imprecise information points, and predictions in keeping with private firm knowledge—none of which can be the most impartial sources upon which to base new insurance policies.

“the information we get from this survey,” Secretary Perez wrote in a weblog put up on the DOL web page, “will lend a hand the department do one thing which is very important to good policymaking and smart trade: figuring out the earlier and present so that we are able to prepare for the longer term.”