"We Don't Need no Education": Required Abilities in Online Labor Markets

The paper presents a study conducted through a cross sectional research design and a quantitative content analysis method to categorize and provide a numerically based summary of the different abilities requested in online routine labor markets like Mechanical Turk. These markets are growing nowadays for the outsourcing of routine information processing tasks. This is mainly due to the existence of tasks that computerization is not capable to substitute. This research is a first attempt to study abilities required by employers from low skilled information processing workers in virtual marketplaces. It also points out the fact that a new generation of temporary workers is appearing on the labor market raising questions about their characteristics, behaviors and differences compared to high skilled knowledge workers. The unit of analysis is a sample of tasks published by requesters on Mechanical Turk starting from 24th to 31th January 2010.