Introduction

What is the Gig Economy?

In short the gig economy is a sub-sector of the platform economy, which enables all organisations and individuals to participate in the broader digital economy. It is also called the ‘sharing’ economy, ‘open talent’ economy, ‘freelance’ economy and the ‘on demand’ economy, and is best defined by a market which is based on a fixed-termcontract or that is paid per project by a company, third party, or online marketplace. There is a misconception that gig work is the same as contract or freelance work.

Certainly, gig work has a lot of similarities with these types of work, but the key difference is that gig work tends to focus on short-term, single projects or tasks. Indeed, most gig jobs tend to be quite short-term, requiring only a few hours (or even minutes) to complete.
With this definition of a gig, the gig economy simply describes the combination of companies who hire gig workers and the workers who earn money from completing gigs

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