Independent work: choice, necessity, and the gig economy

5. METHODOLOGY FOR OCCUPATIONAL ANALYSIS
We conducted a detailed analysis of some 150 occupational categories, considering a 
number of indicators that determine whether these jobs could theoretically be handled by 
independent workers.
These considerations include the extent to which the job consists of discrete tasks that can 
be clearly outlined for external hires and spelled out in contracts. We also look at whether 
the occupation is non-managerial, since companies generally want to retain continuity of 
leadership. The degree of contextual knowledge required to do the job is another important 
factor. If that knowledge is not explicit and easily transferable, the job will not be well 
suited for external hires, as it requires more on-boarding and real-time interaction. We also 
consider whether the occupation has high seasonality or high turnover. Seasonal industries 
(such as retail) have always relied on temporary workers during periods of heavier demand, 
while occupations that have very high turnover could be considered de facto independent 
since many people take those jobs with the intention of quitting in just a few months. 
Companies in the fast food industry, for instance, have already designed rapid on-boarding 
because of the rate at which new employees cycle in and out. Finally, we consider whether 
the occupation demands scarce talent, since many companies might not need to (or be 
able to afford to) keep employees with highly specialized skills on their permanent payroll. 
Instead, these workers could enter into independent work arrangements and split their time 
between multiple clients. 
Based on whether these attributes apply, we defined five broad archetypes of workers 
spanning millions of jobs in the United States and Europe:
 
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Transient workers.
 These workers have widely available skills and occupy jobs with 
high turnover or seasonality in fields such as retail and food service. Their roles are 
easily converted to independent work—and in fact, many of them are already hired in a 
temporary capacity. 
 
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Experts.
 Workers with specialized, scarce skills can spread their time between multiple 
employers given the demand for their skills. This includes occupations like programmers, 
physicians, and lawyers at the very top of the wage scale. 
 
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Generalists.
 These are workers with more readily available skills who occupy jobs with 
discrete tasks and easily transferable knowledge. Their work could in principle become 
independent, as evidenced by the success of platforms such as Uber. 
 
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Project-based managers.
 While most managerial roles are not conducive to 
independent work, it is a different story in project-based environments. Construction 
managers and people who work on collaborative creative projects fall into this category, 
which is the smallest of our archetypes. 

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Appendix: Technical notes 
 
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Traditional “company workers.”
 These workers have readily available skills and 
perform discrete tasks, but their roles demand some contextual knowledge. This 
category includes occupations like registered nurses, who share common skills 
but benefit from knowing the intricacies of processes in a given hospital. Similarly, 
secretaries and executive assistants do not have rare skills, but their knowledge of how 
to navigate a particular company’s administrative and bureaucratic processes may be 
priceless. This category is less suited to being converted into independent work since 
their contextual knowledge directly contributes to organizational efficiency and efficacy.
We then used the following mapping to assign each occupation to one of these archetypes 
(Exhibit A9). Transient workers and experts seem to have the greatest opportunity to be 
independent; many of them already are, and turnover is already high in many of these 
professions. At the other end of the spectrum, some occupations that fall outside these 
categories or blur these boundaries are poorly suited to being handled independently. 
These include executives, members of the clergy, teachers, full-time nannies, and business 
operations specialists.
In each case, we identified data indicators that we felt were strong proxies for the criteria we 
wanted to capture. For example, talent scarcity was based on median hourly wages. We 
assumed that workers had scarce talent if they were in an occupation in which the median 
hourly wage was greater than the 90th percentile for that country’s hourly wages overall. 
Exhibit A10 details the indicators applied.