Earn Index

Notes on published research about platform work — and on the estimates that were later revised

The revision sits beside the original figure whenever the researchers or the statistical agency published one.

Instrument Survey · Tax · Agency Status Corrected · Revised · Compared Units Kept apart

Subject

Corrections are the record, not the footnote

Headline numbers about online earnings travel further than the papers they came from. A share of the workforce, an hourly figure, a growth rate: each is produced by a particular instrument, over a particular period, for a particular population, and each carries the limits of that instrument.

Some of the most cited estimates in this field were subsequently corrected by the people who produced them. A survey question was misread by respondents. A comparison across two datasets turned out to be inconsistent. A tax record captured a different population than a household survey did.

Those corrections are not footnotes here. They are the subject. Each note states what was measured, what the first published figure was, what the revision changed, and what the authors said their result does not cover.

Three measures, and what happened to them

Units kept apart

Described as the cited authors and agencies published them. Figures below are not averaged together and are not treated as interchangeable measures of the same thing.

Reference index of notes
Source	Instrument	Status
US Bureau of Labor Statistics	Contingent Worker Supplement, electronically mediated work	Corrected by agency
Katz & Krueger	Alternative work arrangements, RAND survey vs. household survey	Revised by authors
Collins, Garin, Jackson, Koustas & Payne	Federal tax records, two decades of filings	Different instrument

The index

Three notes on record

Each entry sets out the question, the instrument, the published result and the boundary the authors placed around it.

Entry 01Instrument Household survey supplementStatus Corrected 2018

A federal statistic that its own agency withdrew

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics published estimates of electronically mediated work from the May 2017 Contingent Worker Supplement, then determined that a substantial number of respondents had been misclassified, and reissued lower figures with an explanation of the error.

Entry 02Instrument Survey comparisonStatus Revised by authors

When two economists revised their own widely cited estimate

Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger reported a sharp rise in alternative work arrangements, then published a reassessment concluding that the increase they had measured was considerably smaller once their survey was set against the government's own supplement.

Entry 03Instrument Administrative tax recordsStatus Different population

What tax filings show that household surveys miss

Collins, Garin, Jackson, Koustas and Payne read two decades of federal tax returns and found platform work concentrated among filers with modest and often intermittent income from it — a picture drawn by a different instrument than the surveys it is frequently compared against.

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