Sizing up the Gig Economy: Current Approaches and Estimates,Employment, GDP, and Employment Growth in India

 Who is a  Gig Worker?

A gig worker is a person who engages in income-earning activities outside of a traditional employer-employee relationship, as well as in the informal sector (Ministry of Labour and Employment, 2020a).

When gig workers use platforms – i.e., websites or apps like Ola, Uber, Dunzo, Zomato, Swiggy or Urban Company – to connect with customers, they are called platform workers.

The gig economy engages millions of gig workers

• The rise of the gig economy in India is changing the face of its workforce. The current estimation for gig economy jobs in India is at 8 to 18 million, which is projected to increase to over 90 million jobs in the non-farm sector in the next eight to ten years . Therefore, by next decade the gig economy in India can see USD 250 billion transactions at 1.25% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

• It is estimated that in 2020-21, 77 lakh (7.7 million) workers were engaged in the gig economy. They constituted 2.6% of the nonagricultural workforce or 1.5% of the total workforce in India

• The gig workforce is expected to expand to 2.35 crore (23.5 million) workers by 2029-30. The gig workers are expected to form 6.7% of the non-agricultural workforce or 4.1% of  the  total livelihood in India by 2029-30.

There is a growing demand for gig work

• The employment elasticity to GDP growth for gig workers was above one throughout the period 2011-12 to 2019-20, and was always above the overall employment elasticity.

• The higher employment elasticity for gig workers indicates the nature of economic growth, which created greater demand for gig workers while not generating commensurate demand for non-gig workers.

• This also points towards greater conversion of non-gig work to that of gig work.

Gig work is expanding in all sectors.

• a. In terms of industrial classification, about 26.6 lakh (2.7 million) gig workers were involved in retail trade and sales, and about 13 lakh (1.3 million) were in the transportation sector.

• About 6.2 lakhs (0.6 million) were in manufacturing and another 6.3 lakhs (0.6 million) in the finance and insurance activities.
• The retail sector saw an increase of 15 lakh (1.5 million) workers during 2011-12 to 2019-20, transport sector 7.8 lakhs (0.8 million), manufacturing — 3.9 lakhs (0.4 million).
• In the education sector, the expansion was from 66,000 to more than one lakh (100,000) by 2019-20

Gig work may accentuate skill polarisation

• At present about 47% of the gig work is in medium skilled jobs, about 22% in high skilled, and about 31% in low skilled jobs

• Trend shows the concentration of workers in medium skills is gradually declining and that of the low skilled and high skilled is increasing.
• It may be expected that while the domination of medium skills would continue till 2030, gig work with other skills will emerge.

RAISE Framework for operationalising the Code on Social Security (CoSS), 2020 As  Central and State governments draw up rules and regulations under CoSS 2020, they could adopt the five-pronged RAISE  .

i. Recognise the varied nature of platform work to design equitable schemes.

 ii. Allow augmentation of social security through innovative financing mechanisms. 

iii. Incorporate, while designing schemes, the specific interests of platforms, factoring the impact on job creation, platform businesses and workers. 

iv. Support workers to subscribe to government schemes and welfare programmes through widespread awareness campaigns. 

v. Ensure benefits are readily accessible to workers