Sheet 02 · Measurement guidance
ILO guidance on digital platform employment: definitions that must hold before a count is composed
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has published guidelines and discussion papers on measuring digital platform employment so that national statistical offices can place platform-mediated work inside employment statistics without inventing a separate, undefined category.
Why definitions come first
Before a household total can include platform activity, the instrument must decide what counts as employment, whether the platform is an intermediary or an employer in statistical terms, and how hours and earnings are attributed when tasks are short or multi-app. ILO materials stress conceptual clarity: without a stable definition, time series cannot be composed across countries or years.
Implications for secondary earnings notes
Editorial discussion of “side” platform income inherits those definitional choices. A count that mixes unpaid waiting, unpaid travel and paid tasks under one label is a different composition from a count that isolates paid task time. Galley Pay treats ILO guidance as a checklist of questions researchers must answer, not as a forecast of any reader’s work pattern.
Limits of this sheet
This note summarizes public guidance themes. It does not reproduce ILO tables in full, does not rank platforms and does not advise individuals on classification for tax or labor purposes. Readers should consult the original ILO documents and national manuals for operational coding.