This text is an automatic translation from Русский. It was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
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This text is an automatic translation from Русский. It was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Read original →Platform-based work used to be considered a side hustle, but today it's a new structure in the labor market, not just temporary income. The key question is whether we'll manage to establish the rules before people are left alone to deal with algorithms.
The gig economy in Russia now encompasses 16% of the working-age population, transforming from a marginal phenomenon into a stable labor market segment. Platform employment provides flexibility and access to the national market, but creates new risks: algorithmic dependence, income instability, and a deficit of social guarantees. The adopted law on the platform economy regulates infrastructure, but does not resolve the key issue of protecting the rights of platform workers.
Just ten years ago, the word "job" almost automatically meant an organization, a boss, an employment contract, a schedule, and a workplace. Today, it increasingly means an app, a rating, a personal account, a client in another city, and payment per task.
The gig economy is an economy of short-term assignments. A person doesn't necessarily "join" a company: they connect to a platform and complete specific jobs or services. This could be delivery, taxi driving, repairs, tutoring, design, programming, copywriting, translation, or consulting. For some, it's supplementary income. For others, it's their main job. For still others, it's the only way to remain economically active when there are no suitable vacancies nearby.
The scale can no longer be considered marginal. According to HSE University estimates, overall platform employment coverage among Russia's population aged 18–72 grew from 14.6% in April 2022 to 16.0% in April 2024, while the number of people regularly employed through platforms increased from 3.4 million to 3.7 million. The World Bank estimates global online gig employment at between 154 million and 435 million people, emphasizing both its inclusive potential and the deficit in labor protections.
My position as head of a study supported by the Russian Science Foundation is straightforward: platform employment cannot be described using the old "good vs. bad" dichotomy. It simultaneously expands opportunities and creates new dependencies. This isn't a labor market failure, but its new normal. That means it must be regulated not as an exception, but as a stable segment of the economy.
In the popular imagination, the platform economy means someone with a thermal bag or a taxi driver. But a significant portion of platform labor has long been in a different zone: IT, design, tutoring, copywriting, translation, photo and video production, and consulting.
Creative platform labor became the focus of our research. We studied how gig employment works not only in major cities but also at the municipal level. In January–February 2026, we conducted an original online survey of 486 platform workers from 28 municipalities across eight regions of the Russian Federation. The sample included 301 representatives from creative fields and 185 workers from non-creative platform services—taxi, delivery, household services, and repairs.
The results proved more important than familiar stereotypes. Creative platform workers are on average younger, more likely to have higher education, and more often work remotely. In our sample, 68.4% of those employed in the creative segment had higher education versus 41.6% in the non-creative segment. This isn't "casual side work," but a market for skilled intellectual labor.
For small cities, this is especially important. If someone works in delivery or taxi services, their income depends on local demand: how many orders exist in a particular city. If they're a designer, programmer, teacher, or editor, the geography changes. They can live in a small city while working for a client in the capital or another region. In this case, the platform becomes not just an app, but a bridge from the local labor market to the national one.
Platform employment has a strong advantage: flexibility. You can choose your own workload, combine work with studies, childcare, other employment, or health conditions. For many groups, this is a real chance to be included in the economy. HSE University notes that platforms open opportunities for residents of remote and rural areas, older people, people with health limitations, and those tied to family care responsibilities; the main constraint remains digital inequality.
But this freedom comes at a price. In traditional employment, the employer bears part of the risks: downtime, sick leave, vacation, training, workplace safety, clear dismissal procedures. In the platform model, a significant portion of these risks shifts to the individual.
An algorithm distributes orders. Ratings affect visibility. Declining a task can hurt your position. Free consultations, test assignments, endless revisions, and the need to "maintain a portfolio" become an invisible part of working hours. The worker seemingly has no boss, but there is a system that evaluates, ranks, and effectively controls access to income.
In our research, we calculated a precarity index—a measure of employment instability across five components: income volatility, algorithmic dependence, lack of social protections, burnout, and digital barriers. On average across the sample, differences between the creative and non-creative sectors were modest: 5.7 versus 5.5 on a scale from 0 to 10. But the territorial breakdown changed the picture. In cities with populations under 100,000, the precarity index for creative workers was 6.3 versus 5.8 for non-creative workers; in rural areas—6.8 versus 6.1.
This means that for smaller communities, creative platform work is not only an opportunity but also a zone of heightened vulnerability. A person gains access to a larger market but often remains without a professional community, without protections, without a steady flow of orders, and without a clear mechanism for appealing platform decisions.
Russia has already taken an important step: Federal Law No. 289-FZ "On Certain Issues of Regulating the Platform Economy in the Russian Federation" was signed on July 31, 2025, and takes effect on October 1, 2026. The law establishes the legal foundations of the platform economy and regulates relations between operators of intermediary digital platforms, partners, users, and other parties.
This is a necessary framework. It's important for digital environment security, competition, user protection, and platform transparency. But from the standpoint of platform labor, it's insufficient. The law regulates the platform primarily as infrastructure for exchanging goods, work, and services. The main social question—who is a platform worker and what guarantees do they have—remains open.
The European Union has taken a different path. EU Directive 2024/2831 on platform work introduces an approach to properly determining platform worker status, strengthens transparency in algorithmic management, and provides for human oversight of automated decisions; the new rules are to apply from December 2, 2026.
Russia doesn't need to mechanically copy the European model. We have a different labor market structure, a different role for self-employment, a different territorial scale. But the fundamental lesson is clear: regulating the platform economy cannot be limited to "platform—user—product" relationships. At the center must be the person who works through the platform and depends on its rules.
The most mistaken reaction to the gig economy is trying to force everyone back into the old employment model. That won't happen. People have already appreciated the flexibility, and businesses the speed of access to workers. Platforms have become part of the economic infrastructure.
But the second mistake is believing the market will regulate itself. It won't. Algorithms optimize for speed, cost, ratings, conversion. They're not inherently designed to care about pension rights, burnout, professional development, or the social sustainability of municipalities.
We need a more mature model. First, voluntary but genuinely incentivized social insurance for platform workers—with clear contributions and possibly co-financing from platforms for those who regularly earn income through them. Second, algorithm transparency: a person should understand why they lost visibility, why their rating was lowered, and how they can appeal a decision. Third, municipal support programs for platform workers: digital skills training, coworking spaces, legal consultations, self-employment schools, and assistance with intellectual property registration.
This is especially important for creative industries. A creative worker sells not just time, but reputation, style, expertise, and intellectual output. Their risks are more subtle than a courier's physical exhaustion, but no less serious: burnout, unpaid work, rating dependency, loss of authorship, and income instability.
Platform employment could become a tool for spatial development in Russia. It can retain human capital in small cities, provide people with income without relocation, and expand economic activity where there are no major employers. But for this to happen, it needs to be seen not as a "side gig" but as a full-fledged part of the labor market.
My main conclusion as a researcher: the gig economy is neither a territory of chaos nor a space of absolute freedom. It's a new form of labor organization in which worker freedom must be complemented by the responsibility of platforms, the state, and municipal authorities.
The work of the future can indeed be flexible. But it shouldn't be defenseless.