Dec 16, 2019
More Canadians are joining 'the gig economy': StatsCan
, BNN Bloomberg
The number of Canadians taking on freelance or independently-contracted jobs as part of the so-called “gig economy” is on the rise, according to data released Monday by Statistics Canada.
StatsCan reported that 8.2 per cent of all workers could be classified as “gig workers” in 2016, up from 5.5 per cent in 2005, in a study based on tax filings with the Canada Revenue Agency.
The study found that informal employment was highest among the bottom 40 per cent of Canadian earners, who were about twice as likely to need the work.
It also found that the median net income from informal work in 2016 was just $4,303 annually.
“For most gig workers, gig work was only a temporary activity,” StatsCan noted in the survey summary. “Roughly one-half of those who entered gig work in a given year had no gig income the next year.”
“However, a non-negligible share of gig work entrants — about one-quarter — remained gig workers for three or more years,” StatsCan added.
The tax data used in StatsCan’s study did not, however, find the same prevalence of gig work among Canadian millennials as a recently-released study from the Angus Reid Institute.
Only 27.5 per cent of the informally-employed workers found in StatsCan’s data were 34 years-old or younger. That contrasts with the 40 per cent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 in the Angus Reid study who said they have taken on freelance or independently-contracted work.
StatsCan’s data found that informally-employed Canadians are largely not making their living driving for Uber or renting out property on Airbnb. “Transportation and warehousing” accounted for only 8.3 per cent of the industry-by-industry breakdown of “gig-working” men and 1.3 per cent of women, while “real estate and rental and leasing” accounted for only 3.4 per cent of men and 2.4 per cent of women.
By contrast, “professional, scientific and technical services” accounted for 19 per cent of men and 17.4 per cent of women in the gig economy, while “administrative and support, waste management and remediation services” accounted for 10.6 per cent of men and 13.4 per cent of women. Health care and social assistance was by far the leading sector among women at 20.2 per cent.
