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GAO-19-273R 1 (2019-01-29)

handle is hein.gao/gaobadvlm0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAOU.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 January 29, 2019 The Honorable Robert C. Scott Chairman Committee on Education and Labor House of Representatives CONTINGENT WORKFORCE: BLS is Reassessing Measurement of Nontraditional Workers Dear Mr. Scott: The nature of employment for many Americans is changing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show millions of workers are no longer in traditional full-time, year-round jobs. Several companies that have been established since 2008 rely on nontraditional types of employment arrangements, with workers who typically use electronically-mediated platforms such as websites and mobile applications (apps) to secure work.1 Comprehensive, nationally representative data on nontraditional workers were first collected in 1995 when BLS introduced the Contingent Worker Supplement (CWS) to its Current Population Survey (CPS). 2 The CWS asks a series of questions about workers' employment, including whether their jobs are contingent. CWS has been administered six times: 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2005, and the focus of our report, 2017. For the purposes of this report, we refer to contingent, alternative, and electronically-mediated employment comprehensively as nontraditional employment. BLS defines contingent workers as those with temporary employment. In our prior work, we found that the discourse on contingent employment, which BLS defines as people who do not expect their jobs to last or who reported that their jobs are temporary, is shaped by limitations in available data.3 We also found researchers and analysts were mining a number of alternative datasets to provide insights about segments of the nontraditional workforce. We reported that the data limitations at that time could make identifying emerging trends difficult. In response to GAO, stakeholder, and researchers' concerns, BLS again fielded the CWS in May 2017. BLS worked with stakeholders to draft four additional questions for the 2017 CWS. The purpose was to obtain data about work arrangements that have emerged since 2005, the 1 BLS lists some businesses that commonly facilitate electronically-mediated work, such as Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit, Handy, Amazon mTurk, and Crowdflower, in their September 2018 Monthly Labor Review on electronically-mediated work. 2 For the purposes of this study, the term nontraditional is used by GAO to cover workers classified as contingent, alternative, and electronically-mediated workers. 3 GAO, Contingent Workforce, Size, Characteristics, Earnings, and Benefits, GAO-15-168R (Washington, D.C.: April 20,2015). GAO-1 9-273R Contingent Workforce Page 1

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