Digital platforms at work. Champagne or cocktail of risks?

Digital platforms is an emerging phenomenon across the Western world and allow citizens to accrue income online. Previous studies suggest that these novel economic activities might alter the labour market towards either exclusion or inclusion of certain groups.

Based on a large-scale survey involving 18.000 randomly selected Danes in 2017, this article map and examine the scope and effects of two types of digital platforms, labour platforms and capital platforms, on labour segmentation in Denmark. Our analysis demonstrates two main results. First, the scope and size of income generated via digital platforms remains limited and such types of income tend to be mainly a supplement rather than the main source of income for most digital platforms providers. Secondly, digital platforms seem to reproduce the traditional class-divide and patterns of labour market segmentation and in some instances reinforce such patterns. Capital platforms such as Airbnb attract often highly educated and high-income groups often with strong ties to the labour market whilst other groups such as low skilled, unemployed, migrants and young people are overrepresented among labour platforms such as Uber and Happy helper. Therefore, digital platforms seem to deepen and widening the existing trends of labour market polarisation.

Read the full article 'Digital platforms at work. Champagne or cocktail of risks?' by Anna Ilsøe and Trine Pernille Larsen. Chapter in the anthology The Impact of the Sharing Economy on Business and Society, publiced by Routledge.