The State of Gig Economy in Virginia. Statistics and Trends [2022]

The rise of the industrial economy in the 70s had the working population in Virginia strive to get a full time job with an employer and show up for work. It has been the norm for decades, but if we study the shift in employment statistics closely, there is a big revolution in the making.

The working population in Virginia is currently witnessing a post-industrial shift into a self dependent economy. Gen Z doesn’t want to fit in the industrial complex and look for flexibility and satisfaction in their job. 

How big is the gig economy workforce in Virginia?

29% of the small business workforce in Virginia work as independent workers.

Comparative analysis of gig economy and employment datasets for small businesses suggest a dramatic shift in how working population in Virginia work: 29% of the small business workforce work as independent workers. In Virginia there are 644,341 self employed gig workers ( freelancers and contractors ) compared to 1,590,258 salaried employees in small business payroll ( firms with less than 500 employees).

The gig economy workforce of self employed independent contractors, freelancers, also identified as non employer firms are becoming an important factor in Virginia. As per the current 2019 NES ( released on June 30, 2022) there are 644,341 gig businesses in Virginia, up from 510,297 in 2010. 

This increase in the gig worker population can be safely related to increase in employment opportunities created by the rise of online platforms such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, TaskRabbit.

Which industries contribute the most to the gig economy in Virginia?

The sector " Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services " contributed the most whereas the lowest contribution came from Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction sector.

We aim to look at the distribution of gig economy workforce across broad 17 industry levels as defined under NAICS. As per the current 2019 NES ( released on June 30, 2022), there are 1 sectors with more than 100,000 gig workers. The sector " Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services " contributed the most with the number of gig workers as 100,633. The lowest contributor to the gig economy was the Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction sector with just 192 gig workers across Virginia. The number of gig "businesses" according to the respective industry sectors is exhibited in the table below.

Exhibit 1

The next important thing to analyze is change in the gig economy workforce across different industries over the last decade. This analysis will help us determine the true drivers in the rise of gig economy in Virginia. Analysis of the data suggests that the biggest driver in the gig economy across Virginia is the Transportation and Warehousingsector. The number of gig workers increased by 209% from 23,278 in 2010, increasing to 71,983 in the data from the current reference year NES 2019. 

For the same time period, the biggest loss of 6,142 was witnessed in the Other Services (except Public Administration) sector. The overall decline in this sector over the last decade was at 9%, witnessing a decrease to 65,881 ( in 2019 ) from 72,023 ( in 2010).

The change in the number of gig "businesses" according to the respective industry sectors over the data analysis of last 10 reference years in NES is exhibited in the table below.

Which counties contribute the most to the gig economy in Virginia?

The top 5 counties have 39.81% of the entire 644,341 gig workforce

Looking at the county distribution for the gig economy workers across Virginia, the top 5 counties have 39.81% of the entire 644,341 gig workforce.

On the other hand the lowest contributing locations contribute approximately 0.19% of the state level gig workforce with 1,194 gig workers in total among them.

As expected, the top counties with the most number of gig workers are also the counties with the highest growth percentage of gig workers over the last decade. The best growth achieved is by Fairfax county, where the number of gig workers increased 19% from being 95,934 in 2016 to 114,617 in 2019 ( the latest reference year for NES as per the release on Jun 30 2022).

Who does gig work and what are the demographic profile of gig economy workers in Virginia?

Across Virginia, the number of male workers in gig economy stood at 338,000 compared to 267,000 female workers

Across Virginia, the gig work runs through every demographic profile criteria. As some of the the gigs such as delivering packages, food, driving passengers have low entry barriers work has a low barrier to start with, a lot of younger and population that is not economically established tend to take up these gigs more than the rest of population.

To get more details, we analyzed the most current Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics. We found that across Virginia, the number of male workers in gig economy stood at 338,000 compared to 267,000 female workers.

The distribution on the basis of ethnicity was stark and the number of non hispanics in the gig workforce stood at 563,000 compared to 57,000 workers with ethnicity as hispanic.

On the basis of race the number of gig workers from the white population was found to be 450,000 compared to the 104,000 from black and 64,500 asian population.