Understanding Society User Support

Hello,

One fourth of workers (3217 out of 13010 respondents) reported in wave 13 that they are engaged in the gig economy. Almost all of these gig workers perform the work as their main job (using jbmain). Out of 13,010 workers, 2947 (22.7%) are gig workers with no multiple jobs (i.e. they perform gig work as their single job). I wonder whether this can be right or whether people have misinterpreted the question? The question is worded as follows: "Is this job part of the 'gig economy'? That is, do you use websites or digital platforms to get work for this job?" Could it be that some people thought if they are using a digital platform of sorts or the internet for their work (similar to me just now when filling in this form here), that they are a gig worker? The 'help' function specifies: "The ‘gig economy’ involves use of an online tool such as a smartphone app or website to provide a service on a short term, payment by task basis." Here the short-term is mentioned (which was not mentioned in the actual question) - but do we know whether people read the 'help' text? In waves 11 & 12, a comparable small proportion of workers reported gig economy jobs. Wave 13 only added to the list of gig type jobs the 'selling' type of jobs on platforms but not many have selected these so this cannot have driven the high numbers in wave 13. Instead, the high numbers fall to professional and administrative work, i.e. jobs that use the website or intranet.

A more specific question I have is that 1,753 workers (from m_jbsemp) are coded not applicable (-8) on m_gigempjob. Are these refusals or don't knows?

I would be grateful if you can share checks of the gig economy module and also influences on the variable m_jbsemp. Is jbsemp still consistent across the waves? And how is this variable now generated? I am asking this as I used as check jbmain and multijobs and my created 'jbsemp' is not the same as the m_jbsemp variable provided in the dataset.

Many thanks in advance!