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Statistics • The Modern Way of Working
The Modern Way of Working 2026: Platform Income Stacking by the Numbers
Work used to mean one employer and one payslip. For a growing number of people it now means earning from several platforms at once, usually on top of other work. PlatformTaxHub calls this platform income stacking: the modern way of working. This page brings together World Bank, ILO and national statistics to show how many people work this way, how old they are, and what is pushing them towards it.
Part of a wider dataset covering platform fee structures, the gross-to-net gap and the platform economy.
Cite this page • CC BY 4.0
4042 Solutions Group LLC. "The Modern Way of Working 2026: Platform Income Stacking by the Numbers." PlatformTaxHub, 2026. platformtaxhub.com/statistics/modern-way-of-working-2026
Key Findings
- 1.Platform income is mostly stacked, not switched to. Where national statisticians measure it, platform work is a small share of employed people at any one time: 0.96% in Australia over four weeks, and 0.4% in Canada as a main job. Far more people earn from platforms alongside something else: 51% of US gig workers have a non-gig main job, and of an estimated 435 million online gig workers, only 132.5 million do it as their main work.
- 2.It starts young and carries on into mid-career. In Australia and Great Britain, where every age group is measured, platform workers are over-represented under 35 and under-represented from about 45. But the middle is not missing: in Europe, people aged 30–64 make up about 7 in 10 platform workers, and in the US people aged 30–59 do gig work at rates close to under-30s.
- 3.Where wage jobs are scarce, working for yourself is the norm. 78.9% of workers in low-income countries are self-employed, against 11.1% in high-income countries. In Nigeria it is 85.6%.
- 4.Platform work crosses borders. Workers and clients on online gig platforms are spread across 186 countries, and demand is growing fastest in developing regions.
- 5.The global count is still being built. The ILO says current data sources are insufficient to estimate how many people do platform work worldwide. PlatformTaxHub plans to measure how many people earn from two or more platforms at once.
Bottom line: most people earning from platforms are not replacing a job. They are adding layers to their income. That is platform income stacking, and it is how work is changing for younger workers and in economies where wage jobs are scarce.
Our Data: What the Platforms Take
This is the part of the picture we measure ourselves. PlatformTaxHub tracks the published fee terms of 168 platforms. Of those, 127 charge the earner a stated rate. Across them, a platform’s own fee plus payment processing averages 22.2% of what the customer pays, and ranges from about 5% to 79%.
| Type of platform | Average take | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Creator | 27.6% | 50 |
| Ecommerce | 24.3% | 57 |
| Share | 23.4% | 29 |
| Digital | 22.5% | 108 |
| Gig | 20.8% | 40 |
| Freelance | 16.3% | 33 |
PlatformTaxHub platform dataset, September 2026. A platform can serve more than one type of earner, so it can appear in more than one row. The calculation behind these figures is our own; journalists who need to verify a specific number before citing it can have it under a confidentiality undertaking.
This is what makes a stack expensive. Someone earning on a creator platform and a marketplace is not paying one fee twice; they are paying two different fee systems, at rates set by whichever platforms they happen to use. Platform by platform, the figures are on the fee comparison.
Platform Work Alongside Traditional Employment
Countries are grouped by region and stand as worked examples of what their national statisticians actually measure, not as a ranking or a complete picture. Every country measures platform work differently: over a week, a month or a year, online only or including driving and delivery, as a main job or as any income at all. The figures are shown as each source publishes them and must not be added together. The self-employment column uses one source throughout (ILO modelled estimates, 2025) so that column alone is comparable across regions. The Americas are represented only by the United States and Canada here, because we found no Latin American platform-work statistic we could source to a national statistics office. The chart above does cover Latin America, but it uses the World Bank’s own regional grouping rather than our hubs, because relabelling someone else’s regional figure would misstate what they measured.
| Hub | Where | Platform work (as published) | Structure of employment | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All hubs | Global | 154M–435M online gig workers, 4.4–12.5% of the labour force (online work only) | Self-employed 46.4% · wage and salaried 53.6% | World Bank 2023; ILO modelled estimates 2025 |
| Americas | Canada | 1.7% of 15–69s were paid by a platform in the past 12 months; 0.4% of employed people as their main job (Dec 2023) | Self-employed 12.9% | Statistics Canada |
| Americas | United States | 9% of adults earned via an online gig platform in the past 12 months (2021). 20% did some gig activity in the prior month, including selling items (2024) | Self-employed 6.1% | Pew 2021; Federal Reserve SHED 2024 |
| Europe | European Union (16 countries + Norway) | 3.0% of 15–64s did platform work in the past 12 months (2022, experimental) | Self-employed 14.2% (EU) | Eurostat |
| Europe | United Kingdom | Just under half a million people work in the gig economy; only a fifth see it as their main income | Self-employed 13.1% | CIPD analysis of ONS Labour Force Survey, 2023 |
| Africa | Nigeria | — | Self-employed 85.6%; 93% of employment informal (Q2 2024) | National Bureau of Statistics |
| Asia | Australia | 0.96% of employed people did platform work in the last 4 weeks (2022–23, experimental) | Self-employed 16.1% | Australian Bureau of Statistics |
| Asia | India | 7.7M gig workers, 1.5% of the workforce (2020–21), projected 23.5M, 4.1% by 2029–30 (includes non-platform gig work) | Self-employed 74.9% | NITI Aayog 2022 |
Self-Employment by Country Income Level (2025)
Self-employment covers employers, own-account workers and family workers, not only platform earners. It shows how much of the world already works outside a payslip, and where.
Self-employed, % of total employment, 2025. Source: ILO modelled estimates via World Bank (SL.EMP.SELF.ZS).
By Age: Who Stacks Platform Income
Each comparison below is like for like: the age mix of platform workers against the age mix of all workers in the same country, from the same survey.
Where a source covers every age group (Australia and Great Britain), the shape is the same: platform workers are over-represented under 35 and under-represented from about 45. The other sources point the same way.
Australia: every age group
Share of platform workers in each age group, against the share of all employed people.
Platform work in the last 4 weeks, 2022–23 (experimental estimates). Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Great Britain: people in work
| Age | Gig workers | All in work |
|---|---|---|
| 18–34 | 56% | 29% |
| 35–54 | 35% | 48% |
| 55+ | 10% | 22% |
Gig economy work in the last 12 months, 2017. Source: UK Department for Business (BEIS), 2018.
Europe: the middle is the majority
3.6% of 15–29s did platform work in the past 12 months, against 2.8% of 30–64s. Because there are far more people aged 30–64, they still make up most platform workers: women aged 30–64 are 32.8% and men aged 30–64 are 36.6%, against 30.6% aged 15–29.
16 EU countries and Norway, 2022 (experimental; no national figures published). Source: Eurostat.
United States: rates by age
| Age | Did any gig activity |
|---|---|
| 18–29 | 26% |
| 30–44 | 24% |
| 45–59 | 21% |
| 60+ | 12% |
US adults, prior month, October 2024. A broad measure that includes selling items. Source: Federal Reserve SHED 2024.
Developing economies: share under 30
| Region | Online gig workers | Services sector |
|---|---|---|
| Middle East & North Africa | 79% | 23% |
| South Asia | 66% | 36% |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 63% | 29% |
| Europe & Central Asia | 53% | 20% |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 53% | 30% |
| East Asia & Pacific | 48% | 25% |
Share aged 15–29, 2022 web survey of 17 low- and middle-income countries. Values read from Figure 4.2. Source: World Bank, Working Without Borders, 2023.
What this adds up to: platform income stacking starts young, but it is not only a young person’s way of working. People in mid-career take part at rates close to the youngest group on broad measures, and they make up the majority of platform workers in Europe. The drop-off comes later in working life.
What Is Pushing People Towards Platform Income
These are pressures documented by the sources below. None of the sources claims that any single one of them causes people to take up platform work.
Too few wage jobs where most young people live
In low-income countries, 78.9% of workers are self-employed. The ILO describes much of this own-account work as "often low paid and undertaken out of necessity", and says its share rose again between 2015 and 2025. The World Bank expects 1.2 billion young people in the Global South to reach working age over the next ten years, against about 420 million new jobs.
ILO modelled estimates 2025; ILO Employment and Social Trends 2026; World Bank 2024
Work that crosses borders
The World Bank counts 545 online gig platforms, with workers and clients in 186 countries. Demand for online gig work is growing faster in developing countries: on the largest platform, job postings grew 130% in Sub-Saharan Africa against 14% in North America.
World Bank, Working Without Borders, 2023
Slower hiring in the US
US employers announced 1,206,374 job cuts in 2025, the most since 2020, and planned the fewest hires since 2010. Early-career graduates (22–27) faced about 5.6% unemployment and 42% underemployment in Q2 2026.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Jan 2026; Federal Reserve Bank of New York
AI and first jobs
The ILO estimates that 6.1% of jobs held by 15–29-year-olds are in the occupations most exposed to AI. In the US, employment of 22–25-year-olds in AI-exposed occupations is 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with less-exposed peers, mostly through slower hiring. The researchers describe this as an early signal, not proof that AI is the cause.
ILO, Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026; Stanford Digital Economy Lab, August 2026
One income is not enough for many
About a third of US gig workers say that without gig work they would have trouble making ends meet.
Federal Reserve SHED 2024
PlatformTaxHub’s view
Young people face unemployment more than three times the adult rate (12.4% against 3.6% worldwide), platforms make it easy to start earning, and the early evidence suggests AI is slowing hiring into entry-level jobs. Every one of these pressures points the same way. We expect platform income stacking to grow, and to start earlier in people’s working lives. This is our reading of the evidence: none of the sources above shows that any one pressure causes people to take up platform work.
The Platforms Themselves
2010
142
active digital labour platforms
2020
777
five-fold growth in a decade
Oct 2025
653
fewer, after closures and mergers
Source: ILO, World Employment and Social Outlook 2021; ILO research brief, February 2026. The 2025 count covers a wider set of sectors than 2020.
Each platform sets its own fees and payout rules. See the platform fee comparison for what they take.
What We Are Measuring Next
The ILO says current data sources are insufficient to estimate the total number of people doing platform work. PlatformTaxHub wants to measure the stack itself: how many people earn from two, three or more platforms, or from a job plus platforms, and what that combined income adds up to.
The closest published figures are that 51% of US gig workers also have a non-gig main job (Federal Reserve), and that 132.5 million online gig workers do it as their main work, out of an estimated upper bound of 435 million (World Bank).
Help us measure it
We are collecting this directly from platform earners: how many platforms you earn from, what each one takes, and what reaches you. The results will be published on this page, and the survey takes a few minutes.
Take the earnings surveyUntil then, the figures above are other people’s counts. The fee data is ours.
The Numbers That Define the Modern Way of Working
"Most people earning from platforms are not replacing a job. They are stacking income on top of one."
— PlatformTaxHub, 2026
"Platform income stacking starts young and carries on into mid-career."
— PlatformTaxHub, 2026
"Where wage jobs are scarce, working for yourself is the norm."
— PlatformTaxHub, 2026
Sources and Method
Every figure on this page was checked against the publishing organisation’s own report, page or data service in September 2026. Figures are shown with their original definitions and are not combined across sources. “The modern way of working” and “platform income stacking” are PlatformTaxHub’s terms, not the sources’.
- World Bank (2023). Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work
- World Bank (2023). Demand for Online Gig Work Rapidly Rising in Developing Countries (press release)
- World Bank. Self-employed, total (% of total employment) (modeled ILO estimate), SL.EMP.SELF.ZS
- World Bank (2024). High-level council to tackle looming jobs crisis (press release)
- World Bank (2019). World Development Report 2019: The Changing Nature of Work
- ILO (2021). World Employment and Social Outlook 2021: The role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work
- ILO (2026). Digital labour platforms: Number of platforms and workers (research brief)
- ILO (2026). Employment and Social Trends 2026
- ILO (2026). Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026
- Pew Research Center (2021). The State of Gig Work in 2021
- Federal Reserve (2025). Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2024: Employment and Gig Work
- CIPD (2023). The gig economy: What does it really look like?
- Eurostat. Employment statistics: digital platform workers
- Statistics Canada (2024). The Daily, 4 March 2024: digital platform employment
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (2023). Digital platform workers in Australia
- NITI Aayog (2022). India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy
- National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria. Nigeria Labour Force Survey Q2 2024
- UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (2018). The characteristics of those in the gig economy
- Stanford Digital Economy Lab (2026). Canaries in the Coal Mine? (revised August 2026)
- Challenger, Gray & Christmas (2026). Job Cuts Report, December 2025
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates
This Dataset in Context
This page shows who works this way. The other pages show what each layer of a stack takes, and what is left.