Gig & Sharing Economies

Today, 36% of U.S. adults say they have ever used a ride-hailing service such as Uber or Lyft. Prominent urban-rural gaps in adoption exist.

The U.S. has more foreign students enrolled in its colleges and universities than any other country in the world. Explore data about foreign students in the U.S. higher education system.

Around half of Americans say the question of working conditions is indeed important to them, though fewer are actually willing to pay more to support businesses that are seen as worker-friendly.

Nearly a quarter of Americans say they’ve earned money in the digital “platform economy” in the past year, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Perhaps surprisingly, though, the most commonly cited motivation for these workers is not the pay.

24% of Americans report earning money from the digital ‘platform economy’ in the past year. The extra income they make is a luxury for some, but a necessity for others.

Americans who live in majority-minority communities are more likely than those who reside in predominately white neighborhoods to say that ride-hailing apps serve neighborhoods that taxis won’t visit.

How scholars, companies and workers are using Mechanical Turk, a ‘gig economy’ platform, for tasks computers can’t handle.

The sharing and on-demand economy has grown in the U.S., and some Americans are “super users”: 7% have used six or more shared and on-demand online services.

We interviewed Arun Sundararajan, a professor of information, operations and management sciences at New York University, and a leading expert on the sharing economy. Sundararajan is the author of the recently released book “The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism.”

In our survey, we asked respondents who had heard of the sharing economy to tell us – in their own words – how they would describe the term.