GetSerio Investigates Apparent Discrepancy Between Growing Freelance 'Phenomena' and US Unemployment Figures
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 18, 2015 -- GetSerio.com, an online freelancing site, today released a report that compared recent survey and trend data with the US economic unemployment figures. GetSerio investigated whether national freelancer data is being accurately tracked to exclude wider implications about the US unemployment numbers. “The percentage of American workers that identified as ‘self-employed’ in the Current Population Survey (‘CPS’) has remained steady between 10 and 11%”, said Susan Houseman, Senior Economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment. Yet according to a 2014 report commissioned by non-profit group Freelancers Union, 34% of the population (roughly 53 million Americans) work on a freelance basis.
GetSerio.com looked into the apparent discrepancy between the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ unemployment figures and the recent data released by Freelancers Union. GetSerio.com approached the press officer for the BLS, Gary Steinberg, who informed us: "There is no category called freelancers in our survey because it’s not an occupation and it's not an industry. But our survey [Current Employment Statistics] does include every job that's on a payroll," he said. Steinberg admitted, however, that most self-employed workers, more often than not, are not on a payroll. In which case, they will be included in the "household," or Current Population Survey, he said.
“I do think it’s a problem that we don’t have a handle on how big this phenomena is”, confirmed Houseman. The BLS release their rolling figures on the US unemployment rate every month yet “it’s impossible to know how many [freelancers] are being miscounted, undercounted or left out entirely”, said Sara Horowtiz, founder of Freelancers Union.
“I can tell you that the rate of self employment has not gone up in the CPS. So the question is, is the CPS not capturing freelancers or are freelancers not identifying as self-employed? Because I can guarantee you- if the self-employment rate has gone up, alarm bells would be sounding and BLS would be out there saying ‘we’ve got to figure out what’s going on’”, said Houseman.
Leading industry analyst Altimeter Group also reported a growing movement in self-employed workers, with the rise of “sites like Etsy removing the barriers for aspiring entrepreneurs.” Altimeter Group cited oDesk figures in a 2013 report that found “72% of workers seek to 'quit their jobs to be independent' and would use online freelancing services as a way to move forward.” Both sets of data provided by Freelancers Union and Altimeter Group point to the decline of the traditional 9-5 in the US, and rise of a new independent workforce.
"What would matter is if we're getting inaccurate measures of change in the US workforce, because it means we would think unemployment was much higher than it actually is," said John Horton, Assistant Professor in the Information Systems Group at New York University (NYU), and former staff economist at oDesk.
“If employment numbers are likely to be higher than reported and the economy is growing, could this cause fears of inflation?” asked Jennifer Neeley, Chief Marketing Officer at GetSerio.com, who commissioned the findings. According to CNBC.com’s Mark Koba, "The Fed - with a mandate to control inflation - could raise interest rates to slow down an overheating economy.”
"This would be cause for alarm, as apparently problematic unemployment figures remain a key economic indicator for the Fed when it comes to determining interest rates, and indeed the general health of the US economy. Could 'missing' freelancers in jobs reports affect how hard it is to get a home loan or the value of the dollar abroad? The impact could be felt far beyond the freelance community - by all Americans," said Neeley.
Jennifer Neeley, GetSerio.com, http://www.getserio.com, +1 415-633-6131, [email protected]
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