The Guardian view on microworking: younger, educated workers left powerless

theguardian.com:

Microwork – short digital tasks assigned to workers, who are paid piece wages via online platforms – is now firmly part of UK employment. Almost one in eight workers in the UK “won” the right to perform digital tasks remotely in 2021 by bidding for “jobs” on the web. The TUC says that the proportion of the working population being paid for such digital tasks at least once a week has more than doubled since 2016. Yet almost two in three microworkers – many of whom have a degree – earn less than £4 an hour. This is not only below the minimum wage, but also less than a quarter of the median graduate starting salary.

The demand for microwork has increased with the rise of artificial intelligence, which needs human input to nudge computers in the right direction. Big tech companies employ, often anonymously through platforms, workforces that control quality andtrain AI. This type of employment boomed during the pandemic. People who lost their jobs or their income during lockdown ended up getting work that only needed an internet connection. Now, UK-based workers seeking to supplement their income at a time of double-digit inflation see microwork as a necessary side hustle.

This summer, the thinktank Autonomy warned that these unregulated models of employment are exploitative; unsurprising, perhaps, as half of the global workforce competing for these jobs is found in just three developing nations: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Academics Phil Jones and James Muldoon found that one in five workers they interviewed relied on this precarious form of labour. A typical microwork day might consist of 30 or 40 tasks for different platforms – each lasting between 30 seconds and 20 minutes.

The microworkforce is largely hidden, but