End of Middle-Classes? Social Inequalities in Digital Age

The paper is about a socioeconomics and sociology of middle classes in a theoretical discussion and empirically focussing at “middle class” segments of different European societies for the time period between 2003 and 2014. The argumentation is strongly embedded to Schumpeterian thought of evolutionary economics but it is tried to link discussion about “creative destruction” to digitalization and the evolution of stratified societies in Europe on international comparison. The paper attempts to question assumptions of growing inequality theoretically and empirically by referring to Collins’ thesis of an increased de-middledization. We argue that the ability of ICT innovations (i.e. digitalization) to perform specialized, routine, and predicted tasks better than human allows them to supress middle skilled labor, affect to the polarization of jobs, and finally lead to de-middledization

End of Middle-Classes? Social Inequalities in Digital Age

The paper is about a socioeconomics and sociology of middle classes in a theoretical discussion and empirically focussing at “middle class” segments of different European societies for the time period between 2003 and 2014. The argumentation is strongly embedded to Schumpeterian thought of evolutionary economics but it is tried to link discussion about “creative destruction” to digitalization and the evolution of stratified societies in Europe on international comparison. The paper attempts to question assumptions of growing inequality theoretically and empirically by referring to Collins’ thesis of an increased de-middledization. We argue that the ability of ICT innovations (i.e. digitalization) to perform specialized, routine, and predicted tasks better than human allows them to supress middle skilled labor, affect to the polarization of jobs, and finally lead to de-middledization

Measuring The Gig Economy in Indonesia: Typology, Characteristics, and Distribution

Abstract. Work in the gig economy is defined as short-term and task-based jobs mediated by digital platforms. In Indonesia, the emergence of an online motorcycle taxi driver platform in 2015 marked the discourse about the gig economy as the future alternative of jobs on the one hand, and as a new form of exploitation of labor on the other hand. This study is the first to define the typology of the gig economy and identify the platforms of the gig economy service providers in Indonesia. Furthermore, this study estimates the number of gig economy workers by using micro data from the National Labor Force Survey (Sakernas) released by the Central Statistics Agency. It was found that 0.3 to 1.7% of Indonesian workers participated in the gig economy as their primary job. This study also compares the characteristics of gig workers in the transportation sector and in the other service sectors with the overall demographics of the workforce. It was found that gig workers shared more characteristics with the formal workers than with the informal workers. Finally, this study maps the distribution of gig workers throughout Indonesia at the city/district level. It can be concluded that the gig economy is an urban phenomenon. Most gig workers in the transportation sector are concentrated in the provincial capital and in Metropolitan Jakarta. Meanwhile, gig workers in other service sectors are distributed more in tier 2 cities in Java.Keywords: Gig economy, gig worker, digital worker, labor economics, jobs Abstrak. Pekerjaan di dalam ekonomi gig didefinisikan sebagai pekerjaan berbasis tugas jangka pendek yang dimediasi oleh platform digital. Di Indonesia, kehadiran platform pengemudi ojek online di tahun 2015 menandai ramainya wacana mengenai ekonomi gig sebagai kesempatan pekerjaan di masa depan di satu sisi dan juga sebagai bentuk baru eksploitasi pekerja di sisi lain. Studi ini merupakan yang pertama mendefinisikan tipologi ekonomi gig dan memetakan platform penyedia layanan ekonomi gig di Indonesia. Lebih lanjut studi ini juga mengestimasi ukuran pekerja ekonomi gig menggunakan data mikro survei angkatan kerja nasional (Sakernas) yang dirilis oleh Badan Pusat Statistik. Didapatkan bahwa terdapat 0,3 hingga 1,7% dari angkatan kerja Indonesia yang menjadikan ekonomi gig sebagai pekerjaan utamanya. Kemudian, studi ini membandingkan karakteristik pekerja gig di sektor transportasi dan di sektor jasa lainnya dengan demografi pekerja keseluruhan. Didapatkan bahwa pekerja gig memiliki karakteristik lebih mirip dengan pekerja formal daripada pekerja informal. Terakhir, studi ini memetakan sebaran pekerja gig di seluruh Indonesia hingga ke tingkat Kota/Kabupaten. Dapat disimpulkan bahwa ekonomi gig merupakan fenomena urban. Pekerja gig di sektor transportasi banyak terkonsentrasi di Ibukota provinsi dan di Metropolitan Jakarta. Sementara pekerja gig di sektor jasa lainnya lebih terdistribusi ke kota-kota tier 2 di Pulau Jawa.Kata kunci: Ekonomi gig, pekerja gig, pekerja digital, ekonomi tenaga kerja, pekerjaa

The effect of innovation and technological specialization on income inequality

Using a panel of 28 European Union countries for the period 2003–2014, the authors provide empirical evidence for the relationship between innovation, technological specialization, and income inequality. The results of the fixed effect panel regressions show two important findings. Firstly, the positive link was found between innovation, as measured by patenting activities, and income inequality as measured by Gini index and the top 10% income shares of the richest. Secondly, the authors also found the positive correlation between technological specialization, as measured by the Coefficient of Variances (CV) of Revealed Technological Advantage Index, and income inequality. Overall, the study enriches the previous literature suggesting that innovation may increase the gap of income distribution through the mechanism of Skill-Biased Technical Change (SBTC) and the Schumpeterian view of entrepreneurial rent. More importantly, this study is the first which found that not only the level of innovation does matter to the income distribution, but also how the innovation activities are specialized or diversified. Concentrating the activities into few narrow sectors (i.e., increase technological specialization) may also lead to the increase of income inequality

The economic geography of the gig economy in Indonesia

This thesis investigates the economic geography of the gig economy in Indonesia, with the focus on the interplay between workers in the gig economy and their surrounding physical spaces. Although digital platforms have challenged traditional geographic work boundaries, as gig workers continue to operate within physical spaces and set up their work on the ground, this research emphasizes the importance of geography and the spatial context in understanding the gig economy. This thesis contributes to economic geography literature through two main themes. Firstly, it bridges literature on labour agency, platform control, and regional embeddedness. It proposes a robust framework on how gig workers employ various forms of labour agency in physical spaces to improve their working conditions. This research also exposes the dual role of the platform in shaping and constraining labour agency and demonstrates how different forms of agency may have varying effects on their earnings. Additionally, this thesis reintroduces the term "regional embeddedness" to link the labour agency of gig workers with urban studies literature. Despite the remote nature of their work, online gig workers anchor their labour agency to the cities where they live by utilizing multiple locations of workplaces, actively seeking local buzz in communities, and acting as local entrepreneurs to expand their gig services. Secondly, this thesis highlights the urban-centric nature of the gig economy, emphasizing how both location-based and online gig workers gain benefits from urban agglomeration. For location-based gig workers, neighborhood-based communities serve as spaces for constructing collective spatial fixes. On one hand, they may function as coping spaces where individuals engage in social activities to offer mutual support. Conversely, they may serve as transformative spaces that foster a collective consciousness and cultivate a sense of 'community of struggle'. In macro perspective, this thesis emphasizes the significance of intra-urban scale agglomeration in explaining income differences across location-based gig workers. Meanwhile, for online gig workers, factors such as the strong social connections, the reliability and accessibility of urban amenities, the vibrant urban atmosphere, and the reputation of creative cities may explain the unequal distribution of workers across cities. This suggests that the presence of platform-based work is not uniformly translated into equal opportunities across spaces. The thesis consists of a systematic literature review (Chapter 2), three empirical essays (Chapter 3, 4, and 5), and concluding remarks (Chapter 6). Each essay functions as an independent study with different research questions and distinct novelties to specific literature in economic geography. The systematic review aims to understand comprehensively the role of geography in the 6 existing literature of the gig economy. It is found that discussions on spaces and geography extend beyond dedicated geography and urban studies journals and spread across broader literature. Studies incorporating geographical discourse are mapped into three main clusters: (1) the role of physical space in the absence of workplace, (2) the spatial implication of the presence of the gig economy platform, and (3) Collective actions and regulating the gig economy. The first essay explores how income variation across gig drivers working in the gig economy can be explained by workplace location choice and attitudes related to their labour agency. By utilizing survey data from a large sample of gig drivers in Jakarta, this essay found the presence of workplace location premium: drivers who choose to work in areas with concentrated economic activities earn higher payoffs compared to those who stay in less agglomerated areas. This essay also reveals three dimensions of attitudes that matter in explaining income differences. High level of ‘tacit knowledge and driving skills’ tend to increase driver’s income. On the other hand, attitudes related to ‘reliance on technology and the platform’ and ‘social networks’ negatively affect the income. The second essay explores how gig drivers exercised labour agency to improve their working conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a survey and in-depth interviews with gig drivers in Jakarta, it contributes to the literature by reconceptualizing typology of labour agency in the gig economy based on two main categories: (1) whether the agency aims to transform the system or to cope with the current reality, and (2) whether the agency is undertaken individually or collectively. This essay further presents main obstacles that explain why not all workers may exercise these practices. Finally, it argues that external forces such as pandemic shock, local labour market conditions, and platform control should be considered as factors that shaping and limiting labour agency. It demonstrates that workers in the gig economy are embedded into socio-economic, cultural, and geographical contexts. The third essay investigates how online gig workers embed into the local context to reap the benefit of urban agglomeration. In the absence of a traditional workplace, workers tend to develop a continuous process of becoming part of the city. By drawing on interviews with online gig workers in five secondary cities in Indonesia, this essay structures the notion of regional embeddedness into three main mechanisms. First, workers organize remote tasks ‘on the ground’ by utilizing multiple locations of workplaces. Second, they actively cultivate face-to-face interactions within their social networks for exchanging knowledge and sharing similar identity. Finally, they operate as micro-entrepreneurs who leverage urban density as a business ecosystem to scale up their services

IfS Discussion Papers / End of Middle Classes? : Social Inequalities in Digital Age

(VLID)257259

Measuring The Gig Economy in Indonesia: Typology, Characteristics, and Distribution

Abstract. Work in the gig economy is defined as short-term and task-based jobs mediated by digital platforms. In Indonesia, the emergence of an online motorcycle taxi driver platform in 2015 marked the discourse about the gig economy as the future alternative of jobs on the one hand, and as a new form of exploitation of labor on the other hand. This study is the first to define the typology of the gig economy and identify the platforms of the gig economy service providers in Indonesia. Furthermore, this study estimates the number of gig economy workers by using micro data from the National Labor Force Survey (Sakernas) released by the Central Statistics Agency. It was found that 0.3 to 1.7% of Indonesian workers participated in the gig economy as their primary job. This study also compares the characteristics of gig workers in the transportation sector and in the other service sectors with the overall demographics of the workforce. It was found that gig workers shared more characteristics with the formal workers than with the informal workers. Finally, this study maps the distribution of gig workers throughout Indonesia at the city/district level. It can be concluded that the gig economy is an urban phenomenon. Most gig workers in the transportation sector are concentrated in the provincial capital and in Metropolitan Jakarta. Meanwhile, gig workers in other service sectors are distributed more in tier 2 cities in Java.Keywords: Gig economy, gig worker, digital worker, labor economics, jobs Abstrak. Pekerjaan di dalam ekonomi gig didefinisikan sebagai pekerjaan berbasis tugas jangka pendek yang dimediasi oleh platform digital. Di Indonesia, kehadiran platform pengemudi ojek online di tahun 2015 menandai ramainya wacana mengenai ekonomi gig sebagai kesempatan pekerjaan di masa depan di satu sisi dan juga sebagai bentuk baru eksploitasi pekerja di sisi lain. Studi ini merupakan yang pertama mendefinisikan tipologi ekonomi gig dan memetakan platform penyedia layanan ekonomi gig di Indonesia. Lebih lanjut studi ini juga mengestimasi ukuran pekerja ekonomi gig menggunakan data mikro survei angkatan kerja nasional (Sakernas) yang dirilis oleh Badan Pusat Statistik. Didapatkan bahwa terdapat 0,3 hingga 1,7% dari angkatan kerja Indonesia yang menjadikan ekonomi gig sebagai pekerjaan utamanya. Kemudian, studi ini membandingkan karakteristik pekerja gig di sektor transportasi dan di sektor jasa lainnya dengan demografi pekerja keseluruhan. Didapatkan bahwa pekerja gig memiliki karakteristik lebih mirip dengan pekerja formal daripada pekerja informal. Terakhir, studi ini memetakan sebaran pekerja gig di seluruh Indonesia hingga ke tingkat Kota/Kabupaten. Dapat disimpulkan bahwa ekonomi gig merupakan fenomena urban. Pekerja gig di sektor transportasi banyak terkonsentrasi di Ibukota provinsi dan di Metropolitan Jakarta. Sementara pekerja gig di sektor jasa lainnya lebih terdistribusi ke kota-kota tier 2 di Pulau Jawa.Kata kunci: Ekonomi gig, pekerja gig, pekerja digital, ekonomi tenaga kerja, pekerjaa