PARADIGM SHIFT
HOW BUSINESS CAN BENEFIT
FROM THE GIG ECONOMY
SIXTEEN MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND
PEOPLE WORK IN “CONTINGENT” OR
“ALTERNATIVE WORK ARRANGEMENTS”
Divyan Gupta
Founder and CEO
Keshiha Services
O
f the above, 3.8 percent of workers or nearly 6
million people held contingent jobs while another
10.6 million worked as independent contractors,
on-call workers, temporary help agency workers and for
contract fi rms. These nearly 6 million
Contingent-workers are persons who do not expect their
jobs to last or who reported that their jobs are temporary.
This real hard data is from the US Bureau of Labor
Statistics first official reading (released June 2018) of
the number of Americans relying on temporary work,
freelancing, and on-demand apps to make ends meet. In
short, the “Gig Economy” size is for just one economy. And
it continues to increase every year across the globe.
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| Vol. 10 Issue 1 • JANUARY 2019, Noida
These numbers dwarf other more high-profile
industries. For instance, the US Coal mining industry
employs about 80,000 workers while steel employs about
150,000. In India, we don’t have researched numbers from
any reliable sources. However anecdotally, it is a well-known
fact that India is in the top 5 countries in the world to have
freelancers especially in the areas of web and mobile
development, web designing, internet research and data
entry. As far as gig workers go, it’s workers are mostly
aligned with either the new on-demand app businesses or
the rural workers who shift from gig to gig based on seasons.
But what exactly is the Gig Economy?
While there is no one universally recognized defi nition,
Gig Economy refers to workforce participation in