Employment Shares across Occupations in the Online Labour Market

The online labour market is much less understood than traditional labour markets in terms of demand and supply of labour. In this context, this study explores how service occupations are distributed according to their employment share in online labour markets. Using decomposition analysis of the data from the online labour index database, we argue that the average employment share of service occupations displays job polarisation along the same lines as that of their onsite counterparts. Two implications follow from this finding. First, online gig work involving middle-skill occupations such as clerical, administrative, production and operation tasks grow at a slower pace than high- and low-skill service occupations. While clerical and administrative jobs are likely to be outsourced to geographies with cheap labour, production and operation tasks get automated. Second, high-skill online gigs such as technical and professional jobs display an unprecedented degree of informalisation. Both these implications change our perspectives about skill building and education because of the erosion of wage premiums associated with college education.