Voices from the on-demand economy

Over the last year, my colleagues at Institute for the Future's Workable Futures Initiative conducted ethnographic interviews with more than 30 people across the country who use on-demand work platforms to make ends meet. There's Seda, who runs her own small business selling womens clothing and accessories, but makes ends meet as a professional lab rat who participates, sometimes illegally, in clinical trial studies all over the country; Nichelle, a Ph.D. who crafts communications courses on an online learning platform while she takes it easy as an expat in Costa Rica; Jan, a homeless veteran who is using the Rover.com pet-sitting site to make a little money while she works with Swords to Plowshares to find a place to live and earn a degree; and many other fascinating people.

These ethnographic interviews informed IFTF's synthesis of "7 new archetypes of workers whose input will be critical to creating better policies, technology platforms, and systems for people to have sustainable and successful livelihoods in the future, instead of just maximizing revenue for the platform companies. The research is presented in a new report, Voices of Workable Futures.

From a Fortune magazine article about the research:

The overarching goal of the Institutes report is to help create what it calls positive platformsones that not only return profits to investors but also . . . provide dignified and sustainable livelihoods for those who use them.

To that end, Gorbis says shed like to see more support mechanismspaid for by the platform companiesthrough which gig workers could access tax and financial assistance, physical gathering spaces for social connectedness, and a rating service capturing the employee experience on a range of sites.

Consumers have Yelp, she says. We need something similar from the workers perspective.

"This Is the Backup Career For More and More U.S. Workers" (Fortune)

Workable Futures Initiative (IFTF.org)