A Digital Platform Workforce: Labor Supply and Performance in Remotasks Plus Venezuela

• In Event: Labor and Technology: Platforms, AI, and Inequalities

Abstract

In 2020 Scale AI introduced Remotasks Plus in Venezuela, a pilot program that paid data workers hourly wages and offered training and bonuses, departing from the piece‑rate model typical of digital Labor platforms. Using a mixed‑methods design combining a correlational analysis of a public dataset containing weekly hours, performance metrics and payments for all participants (March 2020–April 2021) with semi‑structured interviews with workers and managers conducted between 2021 and 2025, we examine how hourly pay shaped Labor supply, performance, and incentives. We show that the platform leveraged Venezuela’s socio-economic crisis to attract a large Labor pool and constructed a workforce characterized by a small core of intensive workers who accumulated most hours, while a majority worked intermittently. Despite tasks requiring skill and training, the payment structure rewarded time rather than quality; bonuses were weakly correlated with performance and quality metrics were unreliable. Labor oversupply and the threat of replacement enabled the firm to contain wages, reproduce discipline and sustain productivity without improving working conditions. Our findings suggest that adopting hourly wages alone does not ameliorate the precariousness of platform data work and may generate perverse incentives if not accompanied by transparency and robust accountability mechanisms.

Authors

• Julian Posada, Yale University

• Paola Tubaro, Centre national de la recherche scientifique

• Maicol Quijano, Universidad ICESI