Crowd Work Basics

Contents

1. What is this “crowd-, platform-, and app-based work”?
2. Is crowd work new?
3. What is good and bad about this kind of work organization?
4. What kinds of work can be “crowdsourced”?
5. Are there any kinds of work that cannot be “crowdsourced”?
6. How many crowd workers are there?
7. Is crowd work growing?
8. Who uses crowdsourcing?
9. Are there some platforms with better working conditions than others?

1. What is this “crowd-, platform-, and app-based work”?

We use this term to refer to work delivered or managed through a digital service (website, app, or “platform”) that functions as a matchmaker or intermediary.

Well-known examples include Amazon Mechanical Turk, Clickworker, CrowdFlower, content.de, Upwork, Freelancer.com, Uber, Lyft, AppJobber, Streetspotr, Testbirds, 99designs, Jovoto, TopCoder, Helpling, Deliveroo, Foodora, Ohlala, and TaskRabbit.

Some of these “platforms” let clients post a task to be completed by anyone meeting certain criteria (the “crowd”). Others, especially freelance platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer.com, help clients find individual freelancers qualified to do the work they want done.

 

2. Is crowd work new?

The oldest microtask crowdsourcing platform, Amazon Mechanical Turk, launched in 2005. The oldest freelance platform, Elance, launched in 1999. (Elance merged with oDesk in 2014-15 to become Upwork.)

Some kinds of crowd work (especially microtasking) can, however, also be seen as the combination of globalization and “digitalization” with the logic of existing systems of work organization, such as the piece work system.

 

3. What is good and bad about this kind of work organization?

From a client perspective, two major potential benefits of platform-based work are speed and convenience. Because many platforms have many workers “on call” at any given time, work posted to labor platforms is often completed very quickly.

Different kinds of platform-based work have different benefits and problems.

With work that is delivered digitally, clients can potentially recruit workers anywhere in the world to do work. From a client perspective, this can be an advantage, as it may allow them to recruit talent they would not otherwise have access to. It can be a major advantage for some workers, especially those who would not otherwise have access to work. International platforms such as Upwork and 99designs often attract many workers from “developing” countries, who may be able to work for clients in “developed” countries and earn good wages for their location. For workers in established labor markets, however, especially “developed” countries with strong worker protections, labor platforms may pose a threat to their pay and working conditions, as the platforms may put them into competition with workers in other countries with lower costs of living and fewer worker protections.

A major benefit for workers doing work that is delivered digitally is that workers can work from anywhere they have a computer and an internet connection — for example, from home — and can to some extent work when they want. Platform-based work can be a major income source for workers living in rural areas, workers who must stay at home to care for children or other family members, and workers living with illness or disability.

Additionally, especially on microtask crowdsourcing platforms, workers typically do not have to go through an interview process before starting to work, and may even be relatively anonymous: on microtask platforms, a worker’s gender, age, education, ethnicity, criminal record, and sexual orientation are typically not known to the client. These platforms can therefore provide access to paid work for workers who face discrimination in the offline labor market.

The major problems with platform-based work have to do with the lack of worker rights. Because most platforms require workers to agree that they are self-employed or independent contractors, not employees of the platform or client(s), most platform-based workers are not entitled to minimum wage; paid vacation, parental leave, sick leave, or overtime; employer-supported health insurance; protection from unfair dismissal; or compensation in the event of work-related illness or injury; nor are they entitled to organize and negotiate collective agreements with platform operators or clients.

As a result, many platform-based workers in “developed” countries earn less than their national minimum wage.

 

4. What kinds of work can be “crowdsourced”?

Microtask platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, Clickworker, and CrowdFlower are used to crowdsource many kinds of information processing tasks, including photo tagging, product categorization, transcription, translation, web research (including market and sales research), and improving search results.

Computer science researchers have also developed techniques to use microtask platforms to crowdsource creative work such as fiction writing (e.g., Joy Kim et al., “Mechanical Novel: crowdsourcing complex work through reflection and revision”).

Freelance platforms such as Freelancer.com and Upwork serve as intermediaries for almost any kind of work that can be delivered digitally, including engineering, programming, writing, design, architecture, project management, accounting, customer support, and administrative tasks.

Computer science researchers have also used freelance platforms to automate recruitment and management of expert workers in order to automatically crowdsource complex tasks requiring input from multiple workers with different skill sets, such as film production and mobile phone application development (e.g., Daniela Retelny et al., “Expert crowdsourcing with flash teams”).

Some platforms serve as intermediaries for place-based, in-person work such as driving (e.g., Uber, Lyft), delivery (e.g., Deliveroo, Foodora, Instacart, Postmates), sex work (e.g., Ohlala), and domestic work (e.g., TaskRabbit, Helpling).

There are also contest-based platforms that specialize in particular kinds of work; for example 99designs and Jovoto (graphic design), Local Motors (engineering design), and TopCoder (programming).

 

5. Are there any kinds of work that cannot be “crowdsourced”?

It would be hard to argue that there is any kind of work that cannot, in principle, be crowdsourced, at least in the sense that a freelancer could be hired to do the work via a freelancer platform such as Upwork. Even for highly skilled, highly professionalized work such as health care and law, rating systems already allow customers to rate service providers. While these rating systems are not labor markets, they influence the labor market and could conceivably evolve into platforms that distribute work.

 

6. How many crowd workers are there?

A 2016 McKinsey Global Institute study estimated that approximately 9 million people in the United States and the “EU-15” (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) have earned income by performing labor over a digital platform (Executive Summary p. 18).

Data collected and reported in 2016 by Diana Farrell and Fiona Grieg at the JP Morgan Chase Institute (Paychecks, Paydays, and the Online Platform Economy) show that about 1.3 million Americans earn income over online labor platforms at least once a month. Of these, about 250,000 earn at least 75% of their income over platforms (calculation).

Research conducted by Ursula Huws and Simon Joyce at the University of Hertfordshire with Ipsos MORI and funded by the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, UNI Global Union, and in-country social partners produced the following country-specific estimates of how many people earn at least half of their income over online labor platforms:

 

7. Is crowd work growing?

Yes.

For example, data for the United States collected and reported in February 2016 by Diana Farrell and Fiona Grieg at the JP Morgan Chase Institute (Paychecks, Paydays, and the Online Platform Economy, p. 5) show that participation in online labor markets grew dramatically between late 2012 and late 2015 (see figure).

 

8. Who uses crowdsourcing?

Private individuals and all kinds of organizations — small businesses, startups, non-profit organizations, and even government agencies — use crowdsourcing.

In 2013, for example, the United States Food and Drug Agency used Mechanical Turk to process a large unprocessed backlog of drug safety reports.

Even earlier, in 2011, the United States Defense Advance Research Projects Agency collaborated with Local Motors to crowdsource parts of the design of the XC2V FLYPMODE, a prototype military vehicle.

In Germany, many crowdsourcing platforms list major companies as clients, including Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Telekom, Deutsche Post, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Sony, Audi, and Western Union.

 

9. Are there some platforms with better working conditions than others?

Yes. However, because different workers have different life situations and reasons for doing crowd work, it is not easy to create a set of criteria for evaluating working conditions that everyone will agree on perfectly.

Additionally, it is not always easy to survey workers for their experiences and opinions about platform based work.

On this website we try to rate working conditions on different platforms using a process that uses answers to our 2017 crowd worker survey as inputs. This is not perfect but it is a starting point.