The Effect of Unemployment on the Importance of Digital Income

Abstract

This paper puts forth two separate contributions. First, it examines the importance of digital income considering age and gender. Second, this paper delineates the relationship between the importance of digital income and unemployment, defined at a sub-regional level. This investigation involves the use of the newly released 2018 Digital Economy Survey, as well as the confidential master files of the 2017 and 2018 monthly Labour Force Survey. I find that a change in the unemployment rate does not seem to affect the average dollar value of digital income earned, although it does appear to affect the probability of generating digital income. Furthermore, I find that there are substantial gender differences considering both the importance of digital income and its relationship to unemployment. This finding is consistent for all forms of digital income generation, including the use of sharing economy platforms.