Pandemic Impacts on Gig Economy by Occupations – Base on Online Labour Index

Abstract

Gig economy has attracted people’s attention and aroused a widely discussion in recent years. Online gig economy market plays an important role in gig economy due to its unique characteristics, which provides more conveniences and availabilities to workers. In 2020, COVID-19 influenced the whole world in many aspects, where not only the people’s health is in danger, but also the world economy is retailed. On this occasion, we investigate the relationship between gig online economy and COVID-19 by Online Labour Index (OLI) and VAR model. OLI tracks the number of online projects and works in different countries and various occupations. On this basis, the study chooses two occupations, Professional services and Software development and technology, to analyse precisely and specifically. The original hypothesis is that COVID-19 is supposed to have a positive effect on online gig economy since it provides a contactless working environment. However, the study shows that COVID-19 do not have an obvious impact on these two occupations, and people are supposed to find other influence factors out of this result to poromote markets’ further development from various aspects.