A lot has been said about gig work and the gig economy. You may want to learn more about this kind of employment and wonder if the Department of Labor has statistics for it.

Erica Groshen, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has prepared a blog post, Measuring Gig Work, that gives an overview of this kind of employment and how it was measured from 1995 to 2005, and will update the survey in 2017.

In the blog, Erica introduces the stereotypical gig drivers that draw a lot of attention recently. She states, "You may be familiar with services where drivers use their own cars to take people where they want to go. Customers who need a ride use a computer or mobile app to request a pickup. If a driver agrees to provide a ride, a third party electronically receives the payment from the rider and pays the driver." Erica notes that besides the gig drivers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics would like to know more about people who sign up online to perform tasks for pay when it is convenient for them.

In her blog, Erica gives a brief overview of gig employment in the U.S. economy. She notes that, short term jobs have been around for a long time such as substitute teachers, truck drivers, freelance journalist, day laborers in agriculture or construction, on-call equipment movers, actors and photographers. Many people in these occupations now go online to match up with potential employers. Some people call these "gigs ". The Bureau of Labor Statistics calls these contingent or alternative employment arrangements. Contingent workers do not expect their jobs to last, or their jobs are temporary. Workers with alternative employment arrangements include independent contractors, on-call workers, or people who work through temporary help agencies or contract firms.

The first Bureau of Labor Statistics survey for alternative employment arrangements was conducted in 1995, then 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2005, and discontinued because of lack of funding. The next survey will be in May 2017.

On March 25, 2016, the Wall Street Journal published an article, "Contract Workforce Outpaces Growth in Silicon-Valley Style 'Gig' Jobs," which includes a graph "Share of workers in each type of alternate work arrangement". The infograph shows statistics from the Department of Labor 1995, 2005 and statistics presented by Alan Krueger of Princeton University and Lawrence Katz of Harvard University 2015. Krueger and Katz replicated the DOL Bureau of Labor Statistics survey sampling roughly 4,000 people. The findings show alternative work has spread across industries and occupations such as healthcare and education and other industries that have traditionally offered stable employment. Gigging is up in the U.S. economy since 2005, most of the growth has happened offline, not through apps such as Taskrabbit and Lyft.