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The Contingent Worker Supplement (CWS) to the Current Population Survey (CPS), fielded six times between 1995 and 2017, was designed to measure jobs that were temporary in nature as well as work arrangements thought to be associated with less commitment between workers and employers. The latter includes independent contractor and platform work, temporary help and other intermediated contract work arrangements, and on-call work, which captures a certain type of unpredictable work schedule. While the CWS provides consistent measures of the work arrangements covered in the survey over a 22-year time span, it has shortcomings. Data from other household surveys, employer surveys, and administrative records provide important complementary and sometimes conflicting evidence on the alternative work arrangements measured by the CWS.

Through a combination of new empirical analysis and a synthesis of existing research findings, researchers provide insights from these other data sources into the incidence and trends in alternative work arrangements, the characteristics of workers in these arrangements, and the implications of these arrangements for worker outcomes. The analysis reveals large discrepancies between the CWS and alternate data sources in the size of the independent contractor workforce. In other cases, compared to the CWS, alternate data sources provide considerably broader measures of work arrangements, affecting the understanding of the number and characteristics of workers in them. Researchers discuss lessons from their findings for improving the measurement of alternative work arrangements.

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Key Takeaways

• In many cases, household surveys, employer surveys, and administrative datasets complemented information from the CWS, but not always. In some cases, the analysis revealed large discrepancies between the CWS and alternate data sources. In other cases, alternate data sources provided considerably broader measures of the work arrangement than the CWS, affecting understanding of the share and characteristics of workers in these arrangements.
• Independent contractors represented the most common alternative work arrangement measured in the CWS, but other data sources indicated that the CWS may underestimate its true prevalence. The literature identified several possible explanations for the underestimation, including that individuals may fail to report independent contracting as a job; individuals may conduct independent contracting work as secondary work activities, which are generally underreported; and independent contract workers may often be miscoded as wage or salary workers. Overall, researchers’ analyses indicated that independent contractors tended to earn higher wages than those in standard employment but were less likely to have health insurance or a retirement plan.
• Informal and platform work, including but not limited to gig work, is common: 2018 and 2019 survey data indicated that about a third of all adults age 18 and over had held some type of informal work or side job in the prior month. These jobs tend to be short-term and to provide an important supplemental source of income. Although CWS questions related to platform work may require more careful testing to avoid misinterpretation, results from the CWS on platform and informal work were consistent with results from other data sources
• Business-to-business contracting appeared to be infrequent in the CWS and other surveys, but true prevalence may be much higher. Business-to-business contracting includes arrangements in which a worker is hired through a temporary help agency and those in which employees work at a customer’s worksite. Surveys may underestimate the incidence of these arrangements due to narrow definitions of business-to-business contracting arrangements.
• The prevalence of unpredictable work schedules is likely underestimated in the CWS. Compared to the CWS, other surveys collect more extensive information on work schedule predictability, such as whether workers have control over their schedules and the amount of scheduling notice they receive. Results from alternative data sources demonstrate that unpredictable work arrangements are more common than the CWS indicates, especially among disadvantaged populations.

Citation

Abraham, K., Houseman, S. (2021). University of Maryland. What Do We Know about Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States? A Synthesis of Research Evidence from Household Surveys, Employer Surveys, and Administrative Data. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) sponsors independent evaluations and research, primarily conducted by external, third-party contractors in accordance with the Department of Labor Evaluation Policy and CEO’s research development process.