A major part of the so-called “gig economy” is platform work, commerce in labor, assets, and services done through a variety of digital platforms; Upwork, Airbnb and Grab are familiar examples among hundreds or even thousands of others. Platform work was absorbing a significant proportion of the Philippine workforce due to youthful preferences and a shortage of reasonable conventional job opportunities even before the pandemic, and has grown in importance since. As it is wont to do with socioeconomic developments that should have an impact on government policy, the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) recently carried out research to attempt to put some practical dimensions to the phenomenon.

The study made a number of interesting, though unsurprising findings. Platform work tends to attract younger workers and women, the two demographic segments who are most likely to be driven by either preference or necessity for the perceived flexibility of platform work. Similar to the impressions about the Philippines’ lower competitiveness in the business process outsourcing (BPO) realm, a higher proportion of Filipino platform workers are doing lower-value jobs such as clerical work and data services than in competitive populations; about 25 percent, compared with less than 10 percent in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Conversely, only about 14 percent of Filipino platform workers are doing high-value software development and technology work, compared with 45 to 59 percent of those in Pakistan, Vietnam and India.