Types and Factors of Precarity of Russian Microworkers on "Yandex Tasks"

The platform as a form of enterprise organization is one of the main and rapidly developing innovations of the 21st century economy, which is confirmed by the leadership of platform companies in the lists of the most valuable enterprises in the world (Srnicek, 2021). The volume of the global crowdsourcing market as a special type of labor organization, unfolding mainly on platforms, according to Absolute Markets Insights forecasts, will reach almost $155 billion by 2027 with an average annual growth rate of 36.5%. In this regard, the phenomenon of “microwork”, which can be defined as the activity of performing small and simple tasks for low pay, requiring only a device with Internet access, becomes important (Berg et al., 2018). In Russia, microwork platforms have almost never become the object of sociological research, and this study fills the existing gap by presenting an analysis of the largest microwork platform in Russia, Yandex Tasks. Theoretical analysis based on (1) a description of the digital economy and labor platforms, (2) a conceptualization of crowdsourcing and microwork, (3) an examination of the manifestations of power asymmetries on microwork platforms, (4) an examination of the connection between precarity and platform employment, (5) an analysis of existing typologies microworkers, (6) consideration of the connection between microwork and freelancing led us to the question of how platform employment as a microworker relates to precarity, and the corresponding task of describing the conditions of microwork and the differences between microworkers in the degree of their dependence on income from the platform. For this purpose, a sample of 820 people was collected by posting a survey on Yandex Tasks. The results of the analysis of 20 interviews collected as part of the qualitative phase of the study are also presented. The result of the empirical analysis is a detailed description of the portrait of Russian microworkers and the conditions of microwork in the Russian market, as well as a description of the differences between types of microworkers in the degree of their dependence on income from the platform.