In recent years, especially in the wake of the economic crisis from 2008 to 2013, the gig economy seems increasingly to be an underlying factor in the increase in temporary work (ILO, 2016) and self-employment (GOVUP and Adigital, 2017). According to data from Eurostat (2000-2018), temporary employment in Spain fell during the years of the economic crisis, but with the economic recovery it started to increase to reach, in 2018, some 22.7%. Self-employment experienced an increase between 2012 and 2016, and in recent years it has stabilised at around 15-16%, a value slightly higher than the European average. The research on which this article is based aims to shed light on the impact that these contractual forms have on various dimensions of individual wellbeing: health, happiness, and different facets of satisfaction (economic, and satisfaction with work, personal relations, and free time). For this purpose, microdata are used from the Survey on Living Conditions conducted by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE 2018).

Based on the Survey on Living Conditions, the results of the study show that self-employed and temporary workers present levels of wellbeing lower than other employed people, especially in terms of their self-rated state of health, with a reduction with respect to permanent salaried workers equivalent to 37% of their average health levels. These results suggest that, against the greater flexibility and autonomy that characterise these types of employment predominant in the gig economy, aspects related with greater employment precarity have a greater impact on workers’ levels of wellbeing.

According to data from the European Labour Force Survey, Spain ranks above the rest of the EU-15 countries in self-employment and temporary employment rates, especially when it comes to seasonal work. Self-employment is higher among men, while temporary employment predominates among women, for whom the gap with the rest of Europe is widening. An inverse relationship is confirmed, furthermore, with level of training, although this turns out to be more evident in relation with temporary jobs: whereas self-employment is more frequent among workers of an older age, temporary work is concentrated among young people.

It is worth highlighting that the incidence of self-employment in Spain among workers with higher education, especially women, is lower than the European average. This data would reflect, on the one hand, that the types of jobs associated with this employment modality in the rest of Europe are characterised by a higher level of qualification (for example, in relation with the liberal professions). However, on the other hand, the data would point to the rest of European women with higher studies opting, to a larger extent than Spanish women, for more flexible forms of work that favour reconciliation of work and family time. In both Spain and the rest of the EU-15, there is a notably scarce frequency of self-employment among young people.

For all groups, there is a greater prevalence of temporary work in Spain, against the rest of the European countries. Furthermore, this prevalence is notably higher among women. One differentiating characteristic of Spain is that women with primary and secondary studies present very similar figures for temporary work, unlike men, and these values are only reduced if they have higher education. In the rest of Europe, the relationship between temporary work and training is equivalent for men and women. These data suggest that, in Spain, unlike the rest of the EU-15, women require greater training than men to achieve more stable employment.

Finally, there is a notable marked difference between Spain and the rest of the EU-15 (26 percentage points) in the incidence of temporary work among young people.

The results based on the exploitation of the data from the Survey on Living Conditions show that, in the year 2018, some 23% of the population of working age was occupied in one of the habitual employment forms of the gig economy (self-employment and temporary employment). In this regard, the self-employment rate was 8%, and the temporary employment rate was 15%. These employment modalities represented some 33.5% of the total of employed people (22.2%, temporary wage-earners, and 11.2%, the self-employed).

In all autonomous communities, the incidence of majority jobs in the gig economy is much lower among the so-called “white-collar” occupations – for example, workers from the services sector, the manufacturing sector or construction. These differences are accentuated in some communities such as Extremadura (where the incidence of self-employment and of temporary employment in “blue-collar” occupations stands at 58%), Castilla-La Mancha, Andalucía, and Murcia. In contrast, the Basque Country registers smaller differences between the two types of employment mentioned.

In the research undertaken, different dimensions of individual wellbeing have been analysed: health, happiness, general satisfaction with the individual economic situation, job satisfaction, satisfaction with personal relations and satisfaction with free time. This information has been obtained by requesting interviewees to indicate, on a scale from lower to higher, their level of wellbeing in relation with different dimensions. Specifically, for the satisfaction variables, the self-rated responses are recorded on a scale of 11 values, from 1 “Not at all satisfied”, to 11 “Completely satisfied”; for the variables of health and happiness, the scale runs from 1 “Very poor” to 5 “Very good”. On the basis of the preliminary descriptive analysis, no significant differences have been observed in the average values of these variables among self-employed and temporary workers, on the one hand, and the rest of employed people, on the other.

From the results of the research, it is concluded that working as a self-employed or temporary worker, the forms most linked to the gig economy, significantly reduces individual wellbeing in all of its dimensions, except with regard to satisfaction with personal relationships. The negative effect is greatest in the self-rated health dimension. Specifically, self-employed and temporary workers present, in relation with permanent salaried workers, a reduction of 37% in their average health levels.

In relation with the rest of the wellbeing measures, the impact of working in any of the contractual modalities associated with the gig economy is more moderate, with negative effects of 7% and 9% in the case of satisfaction with individual economic situation and job satisfaction, respectively, to values at around 15% for happiness and satisfaction in general and with free time. These negative effects on wellbeing are maintained, and slightly magnified, when the study includes, furthermore, unemployed and inactive people.

The negative effect on wellbeing of working in one of the employment modalities most linked to the gig economy mainly affects self-employed workers. Thus, in this research it was observed that working as a self-employed person as opposed to working as a salaried employee significantly reduces self-rated health levels.

A lower impact is observed in satisfaction with personal relationships which, for self-employed workers, represents a reduction of 28% in average satisfaction levels. The negative impact of temporary employment on wellbeing is lower than that shown for self-employment: it is situated in a range between 19% and 5% of reduction with respect to average wellbeing levels for this group in different dimensions. The results are similar when included in the analysis of unemployed and inactive workers. This negative impact of self-employment on wellbeing could be due, in part, to the fact that because of the economic crisis that began in 2008, many workers found themselves “obliged” to choose this atypical modality of employment as the only solution for avoiding unemployment, despite it not being their most desired option.

The results of this study indicate that the job precarity of self-employment and of temporary work has a negative impact on the wellbeing of workers, especially in the health dimension. Furthermore, it should be indicated that this way of affecting levels of wellbeing is mainly characteristic of the gig economy, often highlighted for the greater flexibility and autonomy that it offers.

It is important to mention, as limitations of the research carried out, that although self-employment and temporary employment are closely linked to the gig economy, these cannot be considered as a totally precise measure of gig jobs, which means that the results of this study must be taken with a certain amount of caution. In the research, the approach to the gig economy was carried out through a search in Google Trends of the search term “just eat”, a very widespread gig platform. It is worth pointing out, furthermore, that in the case of the analysis carried out based on the data from the Survey of the Active Population, the total number of self-employed people is included, as it is not possible to distinguish self-employed people from employers. The analysis of the Survey on Living Conditions, however, refers solely to those self-employed people within the category of self-employed.

With regard to future research on the platforms economy, its incidence and impact on society, it would be necessary to have more precise data on the professionals that work in and for digital platforms through, for example, the production of a register by the platforms themselves that enables a census to be obtained with detailed information on these workers.

GOVUP and ADIGITAL (2017): Trabajo en plataformas digitales. Análisis y propuestas de regulación. GOVUP and Adigital, Madrid.

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION (2016): Non-standard employment around the world: Understanding challenges, shaping prospects. ILO, Geneva.