A 2016 study of the contract workforce in Santa Clara County found deep racial and economic divides between contractors and full-time workers in the tech industry.

Latinos and African Americans are underrepresented in Silicon Valley and in the tech industry as a whole. Often when they do get jobs, they aren’t hired as employees, but instead brought... See more

For example, the exploitation that tech companies euphemistically call "gig work" relies on minimum wage stagnation and the collapse of social mobility. Grubhub stealing drivers' tips, or Uber and Lyft spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the California Prop. 22 fight to ensure that they could continue denying benefits to their drivers both... See more

This is exacerbated (and facilitated) by the lack of a clear contract and fair terms and conditions for microworkers, with some data labelers coming forward about how they were quietly ghosted from their managers without explanation. This exploitative employer-employee relationship creates an unstable and unreliable environment that workers,... See more

Despite real differences in their jobs, both gig workers and content creators are reckoning with the fact that their livelihoods depend on the actions and algorithms of platforms that they have little to no ability to sway.