Three researchers from the CNRS, the MSH Paris Saclay and Télécom ParisTech have just published a study that estimates for the first time the number of click workers in France.
"The digital economy is currently experiencing a proliferation of "micro-work" platforms: these are specialized services where providers agree to perform fragmented and standardized tasks, usually paid on a per-piece basis. These activities take only a few minutes and their remuneration can be as low as a few cents. Often repetitive and low-skilled, they consist, for example, of identifying or naming objects in images, transcribing invoices, translating pieces of text, moderating content (such as videos), sorting or filing photographs, or answering online surveys.According to the authors, Clément le Ludec, Paola Tubaro and Antonio Casilli, "these tasks are often part of data-intensive processes and long supply chains, feeding activities as varied as the digitization of archives, market research, the management of back-office operations and, above all, the development of artificial intelligence. Micro-work is used, on the one hand, to qualify the information needed for these machine learning algorithms and, on the other hand, to control the quality of the results and, if necessary, to make corrections.
The extent of this new form of work remains poorly understood. Public statistics still have a poor grasp of the platform economy, and the (few) surveys conducted so far have lumped micro-work together with other activities intermediated by platforms. The only widely reported information on the subject is that the main French platform, Wirk, reports 50,000 contributors and has had to close its listings.
Three models of involvement
In order to estimate the number of people involved in micro-working in France, the authors combined three methods: taking into account the numbers reported by the platforms that recruit in France, posting job offers on the platforms to see who responded, and finally measuring the audience of these platforms.They thus detect three patterns of involvement in these activities, which correspond to three pools of users of micro-work platforms
- a group of 14,903 "very active" micro-workers, as they are present on micro-work platforms at least once a week
- a second one of 52,337 regular users, more selective and present at least once a month;
- a third group of 266,126 workers who they consider to be casual.
The main micro-working platforms in France
The authors of the survey have developed a methodology to extrapolate the number of click workers, i.e. the number of French registrations registered on the main platforms and connecting from France.- Amazon Mechanical Turk: 1 250
- Microworkers: 12,766
- Clickworker : 72 720
- Clixsense : 130 900
- Wirk: 50 000
- Ferpection: 14,460
- Appen : 37 000
According to the authors of the survey, it shows "that micro-work has an impact comparable to or even greater than that of the VTC and express delivery platforms in France. It is therefore not an anecdotal phenomenon and deserves a great deal of attention from researchers, social partners and public decision-makers.
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