Online working platforms income as a tool for shaping middle class

Positive transformations in Russia are inextricably linked to its labor resources, the most important part of which are representatives of the middle class, who create progressive technologies and implement innovations in all spheres of activity. It is the middle class that is focused on solving the problems of integration and development of modern society, which implies the expansion of the sphere of entrepreneurship contributing to the increase in income of employees and their households. Despite the variety of information in different statistical sources about the scale of platform employment, we found an increase in its use, which is confirmed by the intensification of entrepreneurs' trading activities on marketplaces of goods as a form of platform employment that increases the likelihood of its participants in the middle class. The article considers approaches to identify the middle class, among which the single-criteria approach, which takes into account the income of workers and their households, is selected as the preferred one. The authors emphasize the multilayer nature of the middle class, which is manifested in the presence of the core and its peripheral parts, the formation of which is carried out in the conditions of active use of modern information technologies. In order to identify the middle class and distinguish its core and peripheral parts, a relative approach based on the use of median income per member of a household with children, taking into account the total fertility rate, was applied. The proposed approach made it possible to identify the boundaries of the income of sellers on marketplaces for goods belonging to the core and peripheral parts of the middle class, taking into account the transfers received by the household. The results of the study confirm that, with a single-criteria approach, income from platform employment promotes the transition of its participants to the middle class