US jobs data may be miscounting millions of ‘gig’ workers, research suggests
Howard Schneider
November 17, 2023
BOSTON, Nov 17 (Reuters) – Millions of “gig” workers may get missed every month in the U.S. government’s employment report, a discrepancy with implications for how Federal Reserve officials size up the job market and any associated inflation risks.
Research prepared for a Boston Federal Reserve labor market conference found that whether driving for Uber to make ends meet or taking piecework jobs in retirement, casual contract workers sometimes don’t consider themselves “employed” or even a part of the labor force.
As a result, they answer government survey questions in a way that may produce a significant undercount of those working, economists Anat Bracha, an associate professor at the Hebrew University Business School in Jerusalem, and senior Boston Fed economist Mary A. Burke concluded in a research paper to be presented at the conference on Friday.
The number could be just a few hundred thousand under the most constrained estimates or as many as 13 million, involving a swing of perhaps 5 percentage points in the share of the adult population that is working at least part-time, a figure the U.S. central bank watches closely.
