Right Before Your Eyes Yet Unnoticed

The Growth of Online Labour and Country Differences in Southeast Europe

Absztrakt

This paper focuses on the increasing prominence of digital labour platforms in the labour markets of Southeast Europe and compares the supply of online labour from 9 selected countries: Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria. Digital labour platforms, as an innovative business model, play an important role in today’s labor markets by linking the demand and supply of digital work. This is no exception in Southeast Europe which has become an important supplier of the online labour. With the COVID-19 pandemic, this and other new forms of employment further increased both globally and in Southeast Europe. Despite this trend, online labour often remains invisible and under the radar of national policy makers and regulators, as well as national statistical agencies due to the global nature of the online platforms.