Who's a Sharing Economy Worker?

Next time you hop into an Uber, you're likely to find yourself being driven by a young male with a college education, according to data released by the company earlier this year.

But another recent report shows these characteristics also reflect workers in the larger sharing economy. The types of people attracted to Uber are also flocking to other businesses in the peer-to-peer market, which allows consumers to rent or buy products and services from each other, often at lower costs than more traditional options.

For those who have assets to offer, it's pretty easy to join the sharing economy and (hopefully) make a profit. If you have a car that meets certain standards and some spare time, you can become an Uber driver and chauffeur people around without having to meet taxi requirements. If you're a good handyman or organizer, you can become a "tasker" for TaskRabbit and earn money working on projects for those who need help.

The younger generation seems to have caught on to the advantages – although there remain disadvantages, like no employee benefits – of using these companies to connect with eager buyers and earn a little extra cash. Nearly 70 percent of sharing-economy workers are between the ages of 18 and 34, compared with just over a third of all the U.S. workforce, according to a Bloomberg research analysis. Younger people also are more likely to use the sharing economy as a consumer.

With better access and adaptation to new technologies, it's no wonder millennials are paving the way in the sharing market. They're more likely than older people not only to have the latest tech gadget, like a smartphone, but also to use it on a regular basis. And, even though more millennials have college degrees than their parents or grandparents, they're often in more dire straits financially and more likely to rent than buy products.

Because so many millennials obtain a college education, it makes sense that 40 percent of people working in the sharing economy have earned a college degree and that the majority have at least some college experience.

Ethnically, sharing-economy workers are similar to those in the U.S. workforce as a whole, but they are much more likely to be male. They also tend to use their freelance money as a supplement, as opposed to relying on it for their entire income. For nearly 40 percent of those surveyed by Requests for Startups for its 1099 Economy Workforce Report, their sharing-economy job accounted for less than a quarter of their household income.

Of course, statistics vary in different parts of the peer-to-peer world, which includes everything from property and clothing rental businesses to vehicle services. Here's a look at some of the most popular sharing-economy companies and how their worker demographics compare to the Bloomberg-reported trends.

Uber

Uber demographics align fairly nicely with those of the larger sharing economy. To start, less than 15 percent of Uber drivers are women – most of them are white men, according to the Benenson Strategy Group study. Part-time UberX drivers new to the industry account for the highest percentage of female drivers, but that number still falls at just over 20 percent.

These part-time UberX drivers, who have no previous professional driving experience and work less than 30 hours per week, account for more than half of the drivers in the company. They also tend to be young, with 60 percent under 40 years old. More than half of them have a college education or higher, and some were even students when they started the job.

UberX drivers who used to drive taxis or black cars, and UberBLACK drivers – who offer a more high-end service – are the least likely to have attended college, and 6 out of 10 of them have kids. Many of the drivers in these groups also are supporting a parent or a spouse's parent.

Uber is unlikely to be a driver's only salary source. Only 36 percent of UberBLACK drivers said Uber is their only source of income, while only 12 percent of UberX part-timers new to the industry said they don't have another means of earning money, according to the study. Additionally, about 3 in 10 Uber drivers said a major reason they took the job was "to earn money while looking for a full-time job."

Nearly 20 percent of Uber drivers worked in the transportation industry before they partnered with the ride-sharing service, and reports suggest Uber has disrupted the traditional taxi industry, especially in big cities like New York. In the Big Apple, Uber expanded from an estimate of about 300,000 rides in June 2013 to 3.5 million in June 2015, The Economist reports. Meanwhile, yellow cabs' business fell by 2.1 million rides during the same period.

Still, while there were more Uber cars than traditional taxis in New York City, according to a March report by The New York Post, yellow cabs still made 10 times more trips each day.

Airbnb

There's limited information about Airbnb hosts, but figures released by the company provide some insight. Hosts who rent properties through Airbnb, a business that allows people to rent space directly to guests, are likely to use their earnings to help pay their mortgage or rent. In fact, more than half of San Francisco hosts in 2012 used money earned from renting property to help pay for those expenses, and 42 percent used it for regular living expenses.

In New York City, 87 percent of hosts rented out the house they lived in, and more than half didn't have a traditional full-time job, meaning they could have been freelancers, part-time employees, students, or retired workers.

However, an analysis by the San Francisco Chronicle provides a more critical view. Many opponents think Airbnb has led to the creation of illegal hotels, arguing that the business creates an outlet for people to rent out entire properties full-time instead of vacant rooms in their homes for shorter periods – a practice that decreases options for people seeking traditional housing in the city.

The Chronicle's analysis found that at least 350 entire properties listed on Airbnb locally seemed to be full-time vacation rentals. While this is just a small portion of Airbnb listings, it still supports critics' concerns about the city's housing economy.

Airbnb's lead analyst contended that the data only represented a small portion of the host community "when the reality is the vast majority are middle-class families sharing the home in which they live," he told the Chronicle. He said only 10 percent of San Francisco hosts rent out properties where they don't live.

TaskRabbit

Want to reorganize your closet but can't find the time? Want a personal assistant? TaskRabbit, an app and website, connects "taskers" with those who need help with specific jobs. The catch? The company gets 20 percent of the cut. Taskers do anything from delivering food to assembling furniture to waiting in line at restaurants or the DMV.

Like Airbnb, tasker demographics remain pretty obscure. Nonetheless, the company says about 15 percent of taskers work full-time, according to MarketWatch, and those who do often make $6,000 to $7,000 each month. In 2013, The Verge reported that 70 percent of the company's partners had at least a bachelor's degree, likely reflecting the fact that many of TaskRabbit's workers had been laid off previously from corporate jobs.

Etsy

When people are looking for unique or custom-made jewelry online, the trendy, go-to site is Etsy – a business that allows people to create and sell handmade or vintage items.

With sellers creating their own specialty products and building their brands on the site, more than three-quarters of them consider their Etsy shop a business, according to a study released by the company in July. Most sellers work by themselves from home, but 10 percent are incorporated or organized as LLCs, Etsy reported in a separate study based on 2012 data. They also tend to run all aspects of their businesses themselves.

Etsy, which was founded in 2005 and now has 1.5 million active sellers and 21.7 million active buyers, differs from its peers in the sharing economy in that it's dominated by female workers. According to the company's recent report, 86 percent of Etsy sellers are women, and many sellers are parents with children at home.

Additionally, Etsy sellers are twice as likely to be under 35 as other business owners, though the average seller is slightly older at 39 years old. Sticking with the larger sharing-economy trend, more than half of sellers have a college-level education or higher.

Three-tenths of Etsy sellers say they hawk their creative goods full-time, but most use their earnings to supplement other sources of income. In fact, the majority of sellers reinvest at least some of their Etsy earnings into their businesses, according to the 2012 data. Etsy also seems to draw entrepreneurs who don't work a normal full-time job: Just 36 percent are regular full-time employees and many others work independently or in part-time capacities.

About one-sixth of Etsy sellers have a household income less than $25,000 a year. But the median household income among sellers is $56,180, which is higher than the general population's median of $52,250, the report said.

It's clear from the data that Etsy sellers aren't just in it for the money. They enjoy the creative freedoms that come with running their own businesses and doing something they enjoy.

Nonetheless, some analysts predict many Etsy sellers will jump ship and take their talents to Handmade at Amazon, which they say is a "superior service," MarketWatch reported. Sellers, the analysts say, are upset because Etsy is on the downfall, partly because people claim mass-produced and counterfeit goods are increasingly being sold on the site.