Sunday, 23 Mar, 2025
By: Anshul Vipat
At present, about 47 percent of the gig work is in medium-skilled jobs, about 22 per cent in high-skilled, and about 31 per cent in low-skilled jobs. Image source: IANS
In an indication of how the gig economy is set to grow in future, NITI Aayog says that the gig workforce is expected to expand to 2.35 crore workers by 2029-30 and constitute 4.1 per cent of the total livelihood in India
The rapidly burgeoning economy is bringing forth a new economic revolution globally. Termed as gig economy, it’s a free market system in which temporary positions are common and organisations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements. Over the past years, gig workers has seen a rapid boom in India.
According to a recent report by NITI Aayog, India had around 77 lakh gig workers in 2020-21, up from 68 lakh in 2019-20, constituting 2.6 percent of the non-farm workforce, or 1.5 per cent of the total workforce, in the country. Titled “India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy: Perspectives and Recommendations on the Future of Work”, it notes that 56 percent of the new employment in the country is generated from the gig economy across both white-collar and blue-collar jobs. About 26.6 lakh (2.7 million) of the total gig workers were involved in retail trade and sales, and about 13 lakh (1.3 million) were in the transportation sector. The rest were in manufacturing, finance and insurance activities. At present, about 47 percent of the gig work is in medium-skilled jobs, about 22 per cent in high-skilled, and about 31 per cent in low-skilled jobs.
According to the think tank, India had around 25 lakh gig workers in 2011-12. This increased to 24.5 Lakhs in 2011-12 to 67 lakhs in 2019-20. The share of the gig workforce out of India’s total workforce has also increased from 0.54 percent to 1.33 percent during this period. The highlight of the report is the shift from unorganized sector to organized sector. In the past decade, the share of gig-workers in the unorganized sector fell from 74.1 percent to 62.4 percent while share of gig-workers in organised sectors increased from 25.9 percent to 37.6 percent during the same period.
In an indication of how the gig economy is set to grow in future, NITI Aayog says that the gig workforce is expected to expand to 2.35 crore workers by 2029-30 and constitute 4.1 per cent of the total livelihood in India. NITI Aayog’s study identifies gig-workers based on their characteristics relating to 7 specifications – Location, Age, Education, Income Level, Type of Employment, Ownership of Mobile Phones & Bank Account (for online transactions).
There are some advantages for such work but there are many problems, too. Gig workers are not entitled to normal professional and social welfare benefits which workers in the traditional streams are entitled to. While countries like US recognises gig workers as employees, India does not. Lack of job security, irregularity of wages, uncertain employment status and special physical and psychological problems arising from the nature of work are some issues that gig and platform workers have to cope with. Government has tried to address this issues by coming up with The Code on Social Security, 2020 but a lot needs to be done. With technological and economic expansion, the number of workers will increase fast, and it will no longer be able to ignore them.
