The gig economy is rapidly growing, and scholars are still working to understand the conditions gig workers encounter. Julieta Aguilar at the University of Kentucky, USA, and Dr. Jeremy Reynolds at Purdue University, USA, examined experiences of harassment in the gig economy. Their findings, published on November 4, 2026, in the open access journal PLOS One, found associations between race, gender, age, and reported experiences of harassment, indicating that already precarious employment may be even more fraught for some workers.
For the purposes of this study, the researchers defined gig work as participating in short-term jobs facilitated by an app or other online platform. The data were drawn from a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, which included over 1,000 US respondents who'd engaged in gig work. Due to the smaller sample size, the analysis was not comprehensive of the race and gender identities of gig workers. Respondents answered questions about their experiences since joining the gig economy, specifically if and how often they'd "Been treated rudely," "Felt unsafe," or "Experienced an unwanted sexual advance." The authors examined the average level of harassment across the three measures.
Levels of harassment were lowest among white workers, but even then, 70 percent of this group said they'd experienced some form of harassment. These numbers, however, jump to 79 percent among Hispanic workers and 82 percent among Black workers. Young women, were even more likely to experience harassment while performing gig work: 92% of young women reported being harassed. Levels of harassment were higher among Black and Hispanic workers than among white workers regardless of age and gender. Workers in these marginalized groups were thus not only more likely to experience harassment, they also experienced it more frequently.
While this study did not have enough data to differentiate more granularly between types of gig work, the researchers found a clear distinction between online and in-person work. Even though only 36 respondents engaged exclusively in online gigs, workplace harassment was so low among this group that it represented a statistically significant difference. That's not too surprising given that while some online gigs like tutoring can involve human interaction, many online gigs do not. Online gigs also do not place workers directly in close quarters with strangers, such as in a car or the client's home, as is the norm for many in-person gigs.
The authors add: "Although working in the gig economy can provide supplemental income, relying on gig work for income is risky because the supply of work, the work schedules, and the earnings are unpredictable. Our analysis shows that in addition to its financial risks, gig work also involves a risk of harassment. As predicted, the risk of harassment varies across workers. Young women in the gig economy face a particularly high risk of harassment, especially if they are young women of color."
"Because gig workers are typically classified as independent contractors, they also tend to lack the legal protections that shield conventional workers from harassment. Gig workers thus not only risk being harassed; they also tend to lack the supports that help other workers report harassment, punish harassers, and avoid retaliation."
"We found it especially interesting that the risk of harassment varies in rather complex ways. Among gig workers, the average risk of harassment, for instance, is not much higher for women than for men. It is really young women who face an unusually high risk of harassment. Among older gig workers, gender differences in harassment are much less pronounced. The association between race/ethnicity and harassment was more uniform. The risk of harassment was consistently higher for workers of color regardless of age or gender. Those race/ethnicity differences, however, were less dramatic than the differences associated with the combined effect of age and gender."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4dXPGoa
Citation: Aguilar J, Reynolds J (2026) Young women at risk: Harassment by gender, race, and age in the gig economy. PLoS One 21(11): e0359956. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0359956
Author countries: USA.
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
