Fairwork Cloudwork Ratings 2022: Work in the Planetary Labour Market

Work on cloudwork* platforms can be done by anyone, anywhere, and anytime – as long as the worker has an internet connection. In a global economy characterised by a shift away from physical offices and towards working from home, cloudwork has provided many opportunities to earn income, particularly for those who lost their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Because of its geographically untethered nature, cloudwork forms part of what has come to be known as the ‘planetary labour market’. Yet despite this, cloudwork tends to originate in the Global North, on platforms based in traditional centres of power. Workers on these platforms, however, are overwhelmingly from the Global South and are subject to an array of unfair working conditions, from lack of pay to discrimination.

This second round of annual Fairwork ratings show that platforms are still not close to ensuring basic standards of fair work in accordance with Fairwork’s Cloudwork principles. Of the 15 platforms investigated, online work platform Profilic fared the best, scoring seven points out of ten for fair working conditions, followed by Jovoto rated five out of ten and Workana, rated four out of ten. For the remaining 12 platforms, researchers were unable to evidence that the companies met more than three of ten thresholds. For some platforms, researchers could not find evidence that they met any fair work threshold.   

*Cloudwork is defined by Fairwork researchers as work that can be performed remotely via digital work platforms.

Note: The Executive Summary of this report is available in German, Portuguese, and Spanish below.