In general, a striking feature of the geography of online labour utilisation is the similarity of occupational demand profiles of leading employer countries. The fact that national online labour demand profiles resemble each other suggests that demand largely comes from the same industry within each country: the information technology sector, generally speaking.
However, there are exceptions to the rule. From Russia, we can observe an extraordinarily large contribution of online labour demand with a background in software development and technology. The divergence of Russia from the average global occupational profile could be attributed to the region’s historically strong focus on skill formation in information technologies. This observation might be an indication that industries and sectors, over time, have started to make use of online labour in greater quantities. Hence, the online labour demand begins to resemble the national industry profile.
In order to expand the geographical scope of our work and to better understand regional patterns in online labour utilisation, our team is currently busy adding new regionally focused platforms, e.g., from Russian speaking countries, to the Online Labour Index.