Friday, February 19, 2016
JPMorgan Chase Institute Report: Understanding Income Volatility & the Role of the Online Platform Economy
Diana Farrell, CEO, JPMorgan Chase Institute, writes, "Even as the U.S. economy continues to create thousands of jobs each month, there are insufficient data to examine the income volatility workers are experiencing on a regular basis. We know that individuals experience high levels of income and spending volatility. Yet, we need to more clearly understand the root causes of this volatility in order to arm decision makers with the data to better inform policy interventions that successfully address this pervasive issue. What variations in income do individuals experience month-to-month? Who is being impacted the most by changes in their earnings? What are they doing to supplement or substitute these shifts in income? And, how heavily are they relying on new ways to work to mitigate this volatility?"
The newest report from the JPMorgan Chase Institute, “Paychecks, Paydays, and the Online Platform Economy: Big Data on Income Volatility,” answers these questions by analyzing an anonymized sample of 1 million Chase customers in an effort to determine the key sources of income volatility and provide the most in-depth look to date into the size and growth of the Online Platform Economy.
By examining consumers’ take home pay, the Institute explores their level of income volatility and, for the first time, looks at the growing usage of online platforms, such as Uber, Etsy and Airbnb, as a potential resource to mitigate fluctuations in income.