Platform economy | Statistics Finland: The platform economy still employs quite a few people

Foundation work only 3.9 percent of Finland’s working-age population has done so in the past year, according to a recent survey by the Statistics Finland.

Although working in the platform economy has been predicted to become considerably more common, it is still very marginal.

That 3.9 percent figure includes everyone who has done platform work at all, even on a one-off basis. So it might give a slightly misleading picture of the amount of ground work done.

For example, last month only 1.2 percent of the population did platform work, and for less than a third of them, the income from platform work made up more than half of the entire month’s earnings.

Of the people who did platform work last month, a good quarter did it as their main job.

Only 7 percent of these people did platform work because no other work was available, said the development manager Anna Pärnänen in his blog.

Most often, platform work is occasional or complementary work.

The most common the forms of platform work were the sale of self-made or purchased goods on platforms, the production of content services, courier services, apartment rental and taxi services.

The majority of people doing platform work seem to have a positive attitude towards the income they get from it.

According to the survey, as many as 76 percent of those who did platform work last month felt that the remuneration they received was very or fairly fair. Only 3 percent felt their remuneration was very unfair.

There is a lot of ambiguity surrounding the position of platform workers. A good quarter of those who did basic work last month could not say whether they were an entrepreneur or a wage earner.

Half of the respondents said they were entrepreneurs and about a quarter were wage earners.

In the platform economy working is clearly more common among people with a foreign background than people with a Finnish background.

During the past year, about 3 percent of people of Finnish background had done platform work. The corresponding figure for people with a foreign background was 10 percent.

Of the platform jobs, courier services in particular and a large part of taxi services as well seem to rely mainly on labor with a foreign background, says Pärnänen in his blog.

55 percent of the people working on the platform are men and 45 percent are women. Platform work is more or less equally common in different age groups, with the exception of people over 55, among whom it is rarer.