ABSTRACT
The global digital revolution has built a global digital market, where every person with access to internet and basic ICT skills is enabled to exercise entrepreneurship. New services or products are traded by individuals via myriad dedicated platforms or on social media platforms. The entrepreneurial mirage will attract more followers in the years to come. McKinsey reports up to 162 million independent workers, even though the real number may exceed the current estimate. As usual the independent workforce (traditional and gig) is surfing under the radar of formality; hence it is difficult to capture it in the official statistics.
Despite the growing literature on the emergence of the phenomenon in Europe and the United States and how this challenges the typical work relations, little has been written on this topic in Latin America. This paper part of an ongoing research on the informal work in the digital economy in Chile aims to contribute to fill the gap, in particular to find out if the informality on digital platforms reflect the informality trends of the domestic labour market.
For this purpose, the paper distinguishes between the digital economy, encompassing almost all sectors which are digitalised, and the gig economy, which in this paper is associated with digital platforms. Moreover, all those using digital platforms to generate income are associated with independent workers, which in Chile are represented by self-employed.
