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The oft-debated recession indicator. Lipstick sales, the “men’s underwear index,” and … an increase in TaskRabbit applications?
There’s been an uptick in recent years in the number of people looking to shore up their income streams with gig work.
That’s been the case for TaskRabbit, which matches up “Taskers” with clients that need things built, installed, repaired, or otherwise completed by a gig worker. Its CEO, Ania Smith, told the podcast Decoder that applications to be a “Tasker” have spiked in the last year.
“As the economy has changed over the last few years — and especially over the last couple of years as we’ve seen a bit more struggle — we’ve had thousands and thousands of taskers applying every year. It’s 15-20% more than a year before,” said Smith.
In the last three years, Taskrabbit has seen nearly more supply of gig workers than the platform can handle, she added.
“So now in many cities we have wait lists and so forth, because we don’t want to onboard a tasker and then not be able to provide them with jobs,” Smith said. “It’s sort of a false premise. I want to make sure that if you are on our platform, there’s work for you to do.”
Smith was asked point blank if she felt the rise in Tasker applications was a recession indicator. She didn’t rule the possibility out, but she said the surge in applicants doesn’t spell recession in and of itself.
“I’m not an economist, and I read all of this stuff, just like you do. And if you do read that stuff, you know, we should have had a recession last year, and one the year before as well,” Smith said. “And those predictions turned out to be wrong. And so I think the word is uncertainty.”
With so many factors up in the air, Smith says the only thing you can be sure of in today’s economy is unpredictability.
“It’s very hard to predict what’s gonna happen with tariffs, what’s gonna happen with bond yields, what’s gonna happen with interest rates, what’s gonna happen with the housing market,” she said. “And so, all I can say is we see an increase in tasker applications. I’m not sure that that’s an indication that a recession is coming.”
“As a platform, the best way we can help our Tasker community is to make sure that our platform is delivering the opportunities that they are looking for,” the spokesperson told Business Insider.
“We know Taskers often need both supplemental income and flexible scheduling options, which is why we invest significant time and resources to attract a variety of clients to the platform,” the spokesperson added. “We want to make sure that Taskers have ample opportunities for work, particularly during challenging economic times.”
TaskRabbit isn’t the only gig-work app to feature a wait list in times of high worker supply.
Business Insider’s Alex Bitter wrote in April that those looking to turn to gig work as a back-up if they were to lose their job could find the move harder than they thought.
“In many cities, getting approved to deliver groceries or drive for a ride-hailing service might take weeks or months,” Bitter wrote.
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