When Motivation Becomes Desperation: Online Freelancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This study combines market-level data about changes in jobs offered via online labor platforms and interviews with online freelance workers to highlight how freelancers are responding to the novel coronavirus’s presence. We pursue this work recognizing that as the scope and breadth of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grow, the implications to workers and labor markets are profound. Our focus on online labor markets and workers reflects our enduring interest in knowledge work, with a particular attention to precarious work. Market data show the dramatic shifts in work availability (supply) and the changes in worker availability (demand) as the United States’ economy struggles with the initial burst of effects of a pandemic. Interview data reveal that freelance workers are aware of these shifts. These changes to already- precarious and market-driven work arrangements are magnified by the realities of balancing family members’ changes in job status, working around children who are home from school, and re-organizing work and lives to account for the rapid onset and confusion of stay-at-home requirements and the uncertainty that is the core of the pandemic. Findings suggest work flexibility, which seems central to freelancer’s motivation to pursue such work, is diminishing and instead freelancers are being driven by desperation rooted in the acknowledged precarity of their situation, magnified by the constellation of events reshaping their working arrangements. We further observe that these effects vary by occupation and are more keenly experienced by women freelancers, both of which warrant additional attention.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Disorders. A Critical Review

“…Another cause of stress in the face of threats during the COVID-19 pandemic is the lack of employment, fear of losing it, or the uncertainty of not getting it [ 58 ]. As a result, freelancers, out of desperation, agree to precarious employment contracts, especially freelancer women [ 59 ]. Many creative professionals have lost their jobs, and freelancers and events producers have been hit the hardest [ 60 ].…”

“…Socioeconomic status is an important factor that contributes to social inequities. Socioeconomic status is a marker of living conditions and habits that influence health by way of different processes, including stress-related mechanisms [ 53 , 59 ]. Low socioeconomic status is linked with poor nutrition, a fact that has a direct impact on health, especially in a pandemic [ 27 ].…”

Gaps in research and practice in social media-facilitated practices at work

“…Despite the benefits that are offered by organizations’ use of SMIs in marketing efforts, the work experiences of online freelancers, such as SMIs, can be less than ideal. More specifically, examining SMIs through a technology experience lens reveals that there are significant challenges for this sector of the workforce, including job precarity (Sutherland et al, 2020) and competition to secure work (Dunn et al, 2020). Further, number of hours worked has been negatively linked to work–life balance and life satisfaction among online freelancers (Davis et al, 2014), demonstrating that the lack of standard work hours in such roles may be detrimental.…”

An Enhanced Freelancer Management System with Machine Learning-based Hiring

“…As distinguished by studies, a freelance entrepreneur engages the service of freelancers to establish a business, whereas the latter vends knowledge, skills and abilities (Kazi et al, 2014). Meanwhile, the labour market has undergone drastic changes throughout the past decade and even more so with the advent of the global COVID-19 pandemic, paving an uptrend in freelance work (Dunn et al, 2020). Yet, existing FMSs still have numerous limitations.…”