Microtasking connects small digital tasks with a worldwide labor pool. The available evidence ranges from the International Labour Organization’s 2018 survey of 3,500 workers in 75 countries to World Bank estimates of as many as 435 million online gig workers globally. Together, these figures show a large and uneven market shaped by unpaid task-search time, supplemental income, migration, gender differences, and informal work.
Contents
- How large is the microtasking and online gig economy?
- Who participates in microtasking?
- How much time does platform work take?
- What role does platform income play?
- How do geography and gender shape participation?
- What do the statistics show about informality?
How large is the microtasking and online gig economy?
The ILO’s report Digital labour platforms and the future of work was published on 20 September 2018. Its micro-task platform survey covered 3,500 workers from 75 countries and examined five major global micro-task platforms. The report also set out 18 principles for decent work on digital labour platforms. These figures describe the scope of the research rather than a current count of all microtask workers.
The World Bank’s Working Without Borders brief, published in 2023, gives a broader estimate for online gig work. It estimated 154 million unique registered online gig workers globally and 132.5 million main gig workers. Its upper-bound estimate reached 435 million online gig workers. Depending on the definition and counting method, online gig workers represented between 4.4% and 12.5% of the global labor force.
The same World Bank brief identified 545 online gig work platforms worldwide. Their headquarters were spread across 63 countries, while workers and clients were located in 186 countries. Nearly three-quarters of the platforms were regional or local rather than global. Low- and middle-income countries accounted for 40% of platform traffic.
| Measure | Reported figure | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| Unique registered online gig workers | 154 million | World Bank, 2023 |
| Main gig workers | 132.5 million | World Bank, 2023 |
| Upper-bound online gig workers | 435 million | World Bank, 2023 |
| Online gig-work labor-force share | 4.4%–12.5% | World Bank, 2023 |
| Online gig platforms identified | 545 | World Bank, 2023 |
| Countries with platform headquarters | 63 | World Bank, 2023 |
| Countries where workers and clients were located | 186 | World Bank, 2023 |
The World Bank also reported a strong regional difference in job-posting growth on the largest digital platform. The measure increased 130% in Sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 14% in North America. A separate World Bank press release stated that six in 10 online gig workers lived in smaller cities. These figures point to a market that is not limited to major technology hubs.
Demand for online gig workers increased 41% between 2016 and the first quarter of 2023, according to a World Bank blog on demand for online gig workers. This is a growth estimate for demand over that interval, not a count of unique workers or completed microtasks.
Who participates in microtasking?
The World Economic Forum’s 2020 summary of the ILO survey reported an average age of 33.2 years for crowdworkers in its Global North sample. More than 80% of workers had pursued post-secondary studies. Four out of five lived in an urban or suburban community. These characteristics describe the cited sample and should not be treated as a demographic profile of every microtask worker worldwide.
The same summary found different gender patterns by geography. In the Global North, 55% of respondents were men and 45% were women. In the Global South, men outnumbered women by five to one. The summary also reported that 13% of women said they could only work from home, compared with 5% of men.
The ILO’s 2024 Decent work in the platform economy report gave another view of gender participation: studies of microtask platforms suggested that only one in three workers were women. Because this is a synthesis of studies rather than one universal census, it is best read as an approximate pattern across the cited research.
Migration is another important dimension. About 17% of freelance platform workers were migrants in the ILO’s 2024 reporting. The proportion was 38% in developed countries and 7% in developing countries. For comparison, migrants accounted for 4.9% of all workers worldwide in the reference labor-force comparison.
The World Bank’s 2023 short note on female labor force participation reported that women made up 42% of online gig workers in a 17-country survey. In the general labor market of those countries, women represented 31.8%. The result is a comparison between one online-gig sample and the corresponding general labor-market measure, not a global estimate for all platforms.
How much time does platform work take?
Microtask earnings must be considered alongside unpaid time. The ILO’s 2024 report found that, for every hour worked or paid task completed on microtask platforms, workers spent about 20 minutes on unpaid work. On freelance platforms, unpaid work time rose to about 23 minutes per paid hour or task. The unpaid component can include time associated with finding, preparing for, or completing platform work, but the supplied figures do not support a more specific breakdown.
Across online platforms, workers averaged 27 hours in a typical week, according to the ILO. The average was 32 hours in developing countries and 20 hours in developed countries. These averages cover online platform work as reported in the source and should not be read as microtask-only hours.
The ILO also reported much higher averages for location-based platform categories. Passenger-transport workers averaged 67 hours per week, while delivery workers averaged 59 hours. Seven-day workweeks were reported by 41% of taxi-sector respondents and 38% of delivery-sector respondents. Those categories are distinct from remote microtasking, but they illustrate the wider range of platform work patterns measured in the same report.
What role does platform income play?
Only around 30% of workers on online platforms relied on them as their main source of income, according to the ILO’s 2024 report. In the United States, 53% of platform workers had other jobs. In 17 European countries, 52.2% of platform workers earned a quarter or less of their income from platforms. These figures indicate that platform work often supplements other income, although the shares vary by country and source population.
The dependence pattern was different in passenger transport and delivery. The ILO reported that 84% of passenger-transport workers derived their main source of income from this work, while the corresponding figure for delivery workers was 90%. These are sector-specific results and should not be applied to microtask platforms.
The ILO reported that, in India and the United States, platform earnings were estimated to be 60% to 80% lower than earnings for similar traditional-labor-market tasks. The figures are estimates from comparisons described in the 2024 report, not a universal pay gap for every task, platform, or worker.
The World Bank’s 2023 reporting also described a gender pay difference on a major gig platform in Latin America: women’s wage level was 68% of men’s wages. This measure concerns that platform and region, so it does not establish a global microtasking wage ratio.
How do geography and gender shape participation?
The statistics show that geography affects both participation and the way platform work fits into a person’s working life. The ILO’s 2018 survey reached workers in 75 countries, while the World Bank’s 2023 platform review located workers and clients in 186 countries. These are different research frames: one is a worker survey of five major micro-task platforms, and the other is a global inventory and estimate for online gig work.
The World Bank’s estimate that six in 10 online gig workers lived in smaller cities adds a geographic detail beyond country totals. It suggests that online work can reach workers outside the largest urban labor markets. At the same time, the ILO’s 2020 summary found that four out of five crowdworkers in the cited sample lived in an urban or suburban community. The two observations use different samples and should not be merged into one universal urbanization rate.
Gender results also vary by study and geography. The ILO survey summary recorded a 55% male and 45% female split in the Global North, while men outnumbered women five to one in the Global South. The World Bank’s 17-country survey found that women were 42% of online gig workers, compared with 31.8% in the general labor market of those countries. These measures are not contradictory by themselves because they cover different populations, countries, and platform definitions.
Home-based work was more constrained for women in the ILO summary: 13% of women said they could only work from home, compared with 5% of men. This result helps explain why flexible online work can be relevant to people whose other work options are limited, without showing that all home-based workers choose platform work for the same reason.
What do the statistics show about informality?
Platform work can be informal in both tax reporting and employment arrangements. In France, 15% of platform workers had notified or intended to notify the tax authority about platform income. In the United Kingdom, 35% had notified or intended to notify the tax authority, while 54% were not intending to report their earnings. These figures describe reported intentions or notifications in the cited ILO comparisons, not confirmed tax compliance for every worker.
The ILO reported especially high informal-work shares in several country studies. In Ukraine, 76% of platform workers reported working informally. In Serbia, two-thirds reported working informally, compared with 39.5% of workers in non-platform work. In Italy, comparison studies found that 11% to 13% of platform workers were informally employed; almost 40% had no formal agreement with the platform, and 44% of digital platforms were not formally registered.
The reported figures were also high in selected developing-country examples. In Lagos, all 138 surveyed platform workers were informally employed and self-employed. In Chile, 93.5% of platform workers were in informal employment in the first quarter of 2020, while the reported rate was 75% in September 2023. The Chile figures come from different measurement dates, so they should be kept separate rather than treated as one unchanged rate.
Taken together, the evidence describes microtasking and related online platform work as a broad, internationally distributed form of digital labor. Its measured scale depends on whether the statistic counts registered workers, main gig workers, an upper-bound estimate, platforms, traffic, or a particular survey sample. Time costs, supplemental income, demographic differences, migration, and informality are therefore central to interpreting microtasking statistics—not side details.