Collaborative Research: HCC: Small: The Market is the Interface: Online Labor Platforms and Contingent Knowledge Work

This longitudinal study examines the ways in which online labor platforms are reshaping work, with a focus on how they sustain their market-making roles, and how workers and employers adapt to these changes. Given the centrality of knowledge work to the U.S. economy, and the lessons of the current pandemic, findings will inform policy makers and contribute to ongoing debates on work, labor and the economy.

The research will accomplish this in three ways: (1) Better understanding of platform architecture design and market adaptation, both critical to strengthening labor markets and supporting both workers and employers. (2) Deeper insights on the emerging structures of working arrangements and digitally-reliant labor strategies, for both workers and employers, to guide training, educating, policy-formation, and worksite support for an emerging form of future work. (3) Specific analysis of each role that online market-making platforms can play in redressing, exacerbating, or transforming known issues with differential treatment of women workers and workers from under-represented populations. The research will significantly advance current understanding about the ways that online labor market interfaces both replicate and address known differences in access to labor due, in part, to the worker's gender, race, and ethnicity.

Data collection focuses on one type of contingent knowledge work: online freelancing conducted through online labor platforms that support human-computer interactions and enable a two-sided labor market. Freelancers (who sell their services) and employers (who seek the services of sellers) interact through the different interfaces provided by the market-making platforms, rendering this a negotiating space.

That is, a study of online labor is also a study of market making, platform architecture, and humans and computer-based systems interacting. Building from current work and the relevant literature, this study pursues three primary research questions: (1) How does an online labor platform sustain its market-making role? (2) How do freelancers adapt to changes on a platform? (3) How do employers adapt to changes on a platform?

Findings will provide a transformative lens into the ways in which labor markets are creating a new form of digitally-reliant labor infrastructure.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.