Unconventional Work, Conventional Problems: Gig Microtask Work, Inequality, and the Flexibility Mystique

ABSTRACT

Gig work platforms often promise workers flexibility and freedom from formal constraints on their work schedules. Some scholars have questioned whether this “formal flexibility” actually helps people arrange gig work around non-work commitments, but few studies have examined this empirically. This paper examines how hours spent in microtask work – a form of gig work with high formal flexibility – influence work-to-life conflict (WLC) relative to conventional work hours, and how these relationships differ by workers’ gender and financial situation. Fixed-effects regressions using panel data from workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform (MTurk) suggest that microtask work hours are just as closely associated with WLC as conventional work hours. Moreover, microtask work disadvantages the same groups as conventional work (i.e. women and financially struggling workers). Only financially comfortable men seem immune from microtask hours’ association with WLC. This suggests that the benefits of gig work’s formal flexibility are often elusive. We argue that platforms like MTurk promote a flexibility mystique: the illusory promise that gig work empowers workers to set their own schedules and earn decent income without disrupting their personal/family lives. The gig economy’s expansion may thus do little to bring work-life balance to the masses or alleviate inequalities at the work-life nexus.

KEYWORDS:

• Flexibility
• work schedules
• work-life conflict
• gender
• gig work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We use “work-to-life conflict” rather than Greenhaus and Beutell’s (1985) original term “work-family conflict” because the original concept is too narrow to appropriately capture the scope and heterogeneity of both non-work demands and workers themselves.

2. Wald tests comparing coefficients for non-gig and microtask hours in Model 2 confirm that they are not statistically different from each other (p = .95).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by [Grant # 2105-32350] from the Russell Sage Foundation. Any opinions expressed are those of the principal investigator(s) alone and should not be construed as representing the opinions of the Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Reilly Kincaid

Jeremy Reynolds Dr. is Professor of Sociology at Purdue. He studies how workplaces contribute to inequality. He is particularly interested in the extent to which people can arrange their paid work schedules to accommodate life outside of work and in what happens when they cannot. Dr. Reynolds is a former winner of the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Work-Family research, and his work has been supported by funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. His research has appeared in leading journals including American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Work and Occupations, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Journal of Family Issues.

Jeremy Reynolds

Reilly Kincaid is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Purdue University. She studies social inequality, work, family, and gender. Her work has been supported by funding from the Russell Sage Foundation and the American Sociological Association’s Social Psychology Section. Her research has appeared in journals such as Social Science Research, Sex Roles, Work and Occupations, and Journal of Family Issues.