Working through digital platform employment. The organisational model and the characteristics of the phenomenon

Abstract

Globalisation and digitalisation have profoundly transformed the configuration of the labour market, enabling the emergence of new organisational models. Digital platforms are the emblem of this change and challenge official statistics. Available statistics on workers involved in digital platform employment yield results that are not easily comparable due to methodological issues and the phenomenon's heterogeneous and relatively rare nature. Reflection on the measurement of digital platforms in terms of definitions and methodologies is the basis of the Handbook on Measuring Digital Platform Employment and Work published in 2023 in collaboration between OECD, ILO and the European Commission. In 2022, Eurostat promoted an experimental module on Digital Platform Employment and attached it to the Labour Force Survey. The module was voluntarily submitted in 2022 by 17 European countries, including Italy. The study aimed to test the methodology, definitions and questionnaire model to produce the first data on employment mediated by digital platforms, in view of an ad hoc module planned for 2026. The module collected data on the phenomenon's prevalence over the previous 12 months and the four weeks before the interview. The present paper introduces the specificity of the phenomenon, discusses methodological aspects related to its measurement, and presents the results of the DPE module concerning Italy, investigating the main profiles that emerge from the associations between the key variables associated with digital platform employment and other characteristics of individuals.