GIG economy in Italy: A survey by Fondazione De Benedetti and INPS

1. GIG economy in Italy: A survey by Fondazione De Benedetti and INPS

2. La GIG economy • Recently, the issue of the GIG economy has been at the core of the social and political debate, in Italy, Europe, and worldwide. • In Italy and Europe, the media have mainly focused on riders, i.e. in the food delivery industry. • Actually, the world of the GIG economy is much more mixed, including the sharing economy, the crowdeconomy etc. • In this presentation I will try to introduce broadly the phenomenon, and then to present the Italian case by means of a survey conducted by the Fondazione De Benedetti, with the INPS collaboration.

3. GIG economy definition • Even the simple definition of the GIG economy is not an easy task, and many different definitions are provided by different institutions. • Even the international institutions have not converged on a shared defintion. • A very broad definition: the GIG economy can be a work model on request, where the intermediation between demand and supply takes place through digital platforms • Three main subgroups: • 1) On-demand services by means of of applications • 2)Crowdwork • 3) Asset rental

4. 1. On-demand services by means of of applications • 1. On-demand services by means of of applications . Platforms such as Deliveroo, TaskRabbit, Handy, Wonolo, Uber, BeMyEye, Lyft, Care, Foodora.. • Services provided are for instance food delivery, home repairs and other maintenance home/firm services, transport of individuals and goods, fitness and other personal services, such as baby-sitter etc. • Please note: • They are «old» jobs, intermediated by means of digital platforms. • They have a «local» dimension, provided to people in a given place.

5. 2. Crowdwork, il cosiddetto lavoro della folla Freelance, programmers, designers, that from their place provided services by means of PC and platforms, such as UpWork, Freelancer, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Twago, GreenPanthera, CrowdFlower, Vicker, etc. Global dimension: The demand can be located for instance in the US, while the provider might be wherever in the world. Some platforms refer to high skilled workers (designers, engeneers, architects). Other pplatforms to medium or low skilled jobs, i.e. answering to surveys on line, audio editing, transcriptions, moderation social network contents, translations) In most of the case, «old» jobs mediated by digital platforms. In some cases, «new» jobs, i.e. social networks moderation, put in order digital material (pics) etc

6. 3. Asset rental • 3. Asset rental: renting of some property of the individual, the sharing economy. • In these cases, the working activity is not the core business. For instance, the owner of an AIRBNB house that deals with reservations cleans. • The core business is the use of a property paying a fee, such as BlaBlaCar, ShareWood, AirBnb, MioGarage, eccetera • Also in this case, old case mediated by digital platforms. Local dimension. • All three cases concerns mainly old jobs. • Is the Big Data processing that allows changing the production process for these services.

7. Between self-employment and subordinate employment • The debate on the GIG economy focused on a discussion on new forms of contracts between self-employment and subordinate workers. • UK case: zero hours contracts, contracts for which the employer is not obliged to offer on a regular base a given number of hours to the worker. And the worker can refuse the proposal by the employer. • This contract is in between subordinate worker and self-employed. • Estimate for the UK 2017: 2,7%

8. Between self-employment and subordinate employment • US debate. • Katz e Krueger (2016) show that from 2005 to 2015 the share of self-employed that can be included in the GIG economy increased by 50%. • Further, Katz e Krueger (2017) point out that having experienced unemployment spells increases substantially the probability to end up in a GIG job, probably due to a falling bargaining power from the worker side. • Also in the US the debate is focusing on etablishing a type of contracts in between self-employment and subordinate employment.

9. Availableestimates • So far, few estimates are available: • McKinsey: around 15-20% of independent workers is involved in GIG jobs with digital platforms • In the UK, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development estimate around 1,3 mln gig worker, equal to 4% of the employed individuals. • Machin and Giupponi (2018), using a survey for the UK estimate an incidence of 3% on the population.

10. Surveyon the GIG economy for Italy • Survey implemented and funded by Fondazione De Benedetti, elaborated also with the interactions with INPS. • Websurvey, casual sample of 15,011 individuals, reduced to 14,773 after a data cleaning (outliers, errors..). Implemented: May 8 to May 15 2018. • Sample representative of the Italian population, thanks to weights computed using some population characteristics: gender and classes of age (and their interactions), education levels, income classes, macroregions. • Further, since the survey is carried out by to internet’s users, we weight the estimates by using the share of Italian individuals that have access regularly to internet (at least once a week) on the Italian population, which is 80% (souce: ISTAT).

11. Incidence of the GIG economy

12. Incidence of the GIG economy

13. General characteristics • Male 58%, female 42%. • Immigrants, 3%. • Education levels similar to the one of the Italian population: it is not true that the GIG economy involves only unskilled labour.

14. Distribution by age

15. Wouldyoulikeworking more as GIG worker?

16. Whichkind of GIG workers: what do theyneed in their job?

17. Do GIG workerslikethier GIG job? • 19% of GIG workers would like working in another type of job • 32% of GIG workers appreciate their GIG job, but they would like having a more stable GIG job, with higher participation and sharing • 48% of GIG workers appreciate their job and would like keeping on in the same conditions.

18. Are GIG workerssatisfied?

19. Distribution of hours by GIG workers

20. Distribution of hourly and monthlywages by GIG workers

21. How GIG workers are paid? Task? Hour? Day?

22. Comparison of total personal income of employees, self-employed and GIG workers

23. Comparison of totalhouseholdincomeof employees, self-employed and GIG workers

24. Can GIG workers decide when and whereworking? • When to work • - Only 15% of GIG workers declate to have a very limited indipendence • 23% that theoretically they are free to decide, but the demand constraints eventually limit their freedom. • 62% decide when to work with no constraints. • Where to work: • 75% decide where to work with no constraints. • 25% limited autonomy.

25. Isthere an algorithm to control workers? • In the debate it is often argued that an algorithm is at work to control and rating workers, with some penalties in case of misbehavior. • In our survey 50% of GIG workers declare being aware of such an algorithm in the digital platform they work for.

26. Social protections for GIG workers • The debate also focuses on the level of social protection for the GIG workers, in particular with respect to unemployment benefits, sickness, injuries, pension, child benefits. • At first we investigate whether GIG workers are aware of the social protection associated to their job. • Second, we investigate the preference of GIG workers, asking them to provide an order of such social protection (1 for the preferred, 6 for the less important).

27. Awareness of Social protections for GIG workers • Only 33% of GIG workers is aware of the type of contract they have. • The remaining 67% can be composed by two groups: • - Those who have a contract that they do not know • - Those who do not have a formal contract (and can be paid by gift card, telephone credit etc. • This means that 67% of GIG workers is not aware of the associated social protection, and probably most of them do not have social protections.

28. Type of contract of GIG workers • Among the 33% that is aware of the contract, which contract do they have?

29. Awareness of social portection of GIG workers by contract • Share of workers aware of having that specific protection:

30. Preference by GIG workers (the 33% aware of the contract

31. How paid? Current vs preferred situation

32. Preferenze pagamento tra lavoro principale e secondo lavoro

33. Lavorano poche ore? Lavoro principale e secondo lavoro

34. Vorrebbero lavorare più o meno ore?

35. Cosa c’è dietro la loro scelta delle ore lavorate ?

36. Salari orari e mensili (lordi in euro)

37. Salari orari e mensili (lordi in euro)

38. Tutele, importanti per INPS • Consapevolezza delle tutele: solo il 34% dei GIG workers è consapevole del contratto loro applicato. • Questa è la distribuzione dei contratti di quel 34%:

39. Preferenze per le tutele, ordinate da 1 a 6

40. Come Lavoratore GIG, pensi che nel tuo contratto la tutela per la malattia sia sufficiente? • Solo il 36% dei GIG workers pensa sia sufficiente • Circa l’80% dei lavoratori sarebbe disposto a pagare per avere una migliore tutela • Variabilità per contratto, che rivela ancora scarsa conoscenza contrattuale e delle tutele:

41. Survey su GIG economy • L’indagine fornisce prime evidenze sulla realtà dei GIG workers in Italia • Tali elementi potranno essere di aiuto al legislatore nell’inquadrare questi nuovi lavori all’interno delle tipologie lavorative esistenti, o per crearne di nuove • Evidenza di scarsa conoscenza delle tutele, di scarsa soddisfazione delle tutele, e di una disponibilità a pagare per averne di migliori