CABE WEBINAR: HOW IS THE WORLD OF ONLINE WORK CHANGING? New Measurement Methodologies, with Dr. Otto Kässi, Oxford Internet Institute

As digital realities change the nature of work, concerns about the quality and fidelity of measures that track trends in the labour market are becoming more widespread. Without confidence in the accuracy of our measurement tools, we can’t be sure what is changing, and for whom. That makes it difficult to identify successful policy options that help people develop their potential and deploy their skills. 

By unbundling jobs into tasks for both personal consumption and business activities, online platforms can more easily match demand for labour with supply, potentially from anywhere in the world.  How important is this newly emerging global market of freelance labour as a business strategy, and how fast is it growing? 

The On-Line Labour Index (OLI) is the first attempt to answer these questions with hard statistics. By taking the daily pulse of projects and tasks performed across platforms, the OLI tracks trends by country and occupation in real time. Since May 3, 2016, when the index was launched, to October 9, 2018, the use of online labour across the five most used English-speaking platforms is up by 27%. Canada plays a surprisingly large role in this global labour market.

Please join Dr. Otto Kässi, creator of the OLI, for a presentation and question and answer session designed for the Canadian Association for Business Economics, using Webex technology.

When: Wednesday, October 31st 1-2:30 p.m. EST

How To Participate: Registration is FREE for CABE members, but you need to log in. Non members will be charged $20. Upon registration you will receive login instructions and logistics for listening, watching and participating will be sent. This information will be resent to all registrants on the day of the webinar.

Dr. Otto Kässi is a labour economist with a background in econometrics. He has been at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) since 2015. The OII is a multidisciplinary research and teaching department of the University of Oxford, founded in 2001. Dr. Kässi’s research concentrates on empirical study of online labour markets, primarily through the ERC funded project iLabour: The Construction of Labour Markets, Institutions and Movements on the Internet. His pioneering methods developed the Online Labour Index https://ilabour.oii.ox.ac.uk/online-labour-index/, the first economic indicator that provides an online gig economy equivalent of conventional labour market statistics.

Dr. Kässi is also affiliated with the OECD as a Future of Work Fellow, where his work focuses on megatrends that are affecting job markets, and the challenges faced by governments in the areas of social protection, skills development and labour market regulation. 

He earned both Master’s and Doctoral Degrees from the University of Helsinki. His studies concentrated on labour economics with a particular emphasis in econometric and statistical methods. Prior to joining OII, Dr. Kässi worked in an online advertising start-up as a data scientist.