Digital platforms as the dominant vector of the global labor market development

Abstract

The article considers digital labor platforms – virtual spaces where the organization of labor is carried out and social relations are formed according to certain rules. The study uses logical, economic-statistical and systematic methods of cognition. The COVID-19 pandemic has created additional impulses to increase the workforce employed using digital labor platforms. In fact, digital platforms have developed their own business model and have begun to form the dominant vector of development of the global labor market. The platforms carry both employment opportunities and challenges. Employment does not always save millions of workers from extreme poverty.

The author highlights the lack of social guarantees, including hospital, medical and other types of insurance, including pension plans as one of the key problems of employment on digital labor platforms. To a large extent, the platforms rely on the labor of employees who are classified as “self-employed” or “independent contractors”, but not “employed workers”. This is one of the fundamental shifts that has far-reaching implications for the future of work. The transformation of labor relations is of long-term nature and requires the creation of new mechanisms that ensure the interaction of the parties to labor relations and their representatives in the new economic reality.