Always on across time zones: Invisible schedules in the online gig economy

New Technology, Work and Employment. 2021. Vol. 36. No. 1. P. 94–113.

Shevchuk A., Strebkov D., Tyulyupo Alexey

This study investigates work schedules in online labour markets, operating in 24/7 mode across spatial borders and
time zones. Focusing on largely hidden and invisible work of freelancers such as searching for jobs and communicating with clients, the study documents how platforms put pressures and constraints on freelancers’ time through the mechanism of task allocation. We use data on 241,582 timestamped messages posted by 29,759 unique users in 4082 contests on a leading Russian-language freelance platform to reveal how freelancers’ efforts to get a job
make them work nonstandard hours, including evenings, nights and weekends. Freelancers have to be responsive
and adapt their schedules to clients’ needs. Freelancers who live in time zones which differ from their clients are
particularly disadvantaged, working a greater proportion of nonstandard hours. The findings emerging from the study
contribute to current debates on the gig economy and a new time-work discipline.

Keywords: фрилансеры, нестандартная занятость, рабочее время, freelancers, non-standard employment, working time, цифровые платформы, электронные платформы, гиг-экономика, online labor markets, non-standard work schedules, платформенная экономика, платформенная занятость, gig economy, time zones, labour platforms, platform work, гигономика, трудовые платформы, invisible labour, невидимый труд

Publication based on the results of: Freelancers survey: monitoring of the Russian-language online labor market (2009-2019) (2019)