Haltiwanger and Abraham comment on missing data
Jeanna Smialek, writing for Bloomberg, reports that the new contingent-worker survey released in 2018 by the U.S. Labor Department would be the first quantitative measure of America’s non-traditional work arrangements since Uber and Lyft burst onto the scene. To the surprise of observers, the results made it clear that the survey was not capturing today’s gig work because it was primarily focused on primary jobs and not side employment. Analysis made by Faculty Associates John Haltiwanger and Katherine Abraham on the fail to capture the expansion of the gig economy found, “the pattern of estimated productivity growth may have been distorted.” Their research findings, based upon a newly-created datasets and tax-based records, suggest that a significant fraction of those self-employed are not reporting that self-employment in household surveys. As a consequence, there are distortions in today’s gig work numbers that really matter.