SMU Assistant Professor of Information Systems Kotaro Hara co-authored a research paper titled “A Data-Driven Analysis of Workers’ Earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk,” together with several other academics from various universities. Their research paper focused on low wage workers employed through the Amazon Mechanical Turk and the disparity in their wages and long working hours.
According to the research, workers on Mechanical Turk earned a median hourly wage of about $2 an hour. Only 4 per cent of workers earned more than $7.25 an hour. Assistant Prof Hara believed that workers earned so little because it was hard to secure enough tasks to be working every minute they are in front of the computer. He also said that workers spent a lot of time looking for tasks, waiting for the interface to load as well as trying to complete poorly explained tasks before deciding to return them.