India’s gig workforce to reach 2.35 cr. by 2030’

Contact Counsellor

Last Updated29/06/2022

According to NITI Aayog, the country’s gig workforce is expected to grow to 2.35 crore by 2029-30.

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Framework to balance flexibility offered by platforms and ensure social security of workers is required.
Report classifies gig workers into platform and non-platform-based workers.
Platform workers: work is based on online software applications or digital platforms.
Non-platform gig workers : casual wage workers and own-account workers in the conventional sectors, working part-time or full time.
Platformisation of work has given rise to new classification of labour - platform labour
Falling outside of both formal and informal labour.
Termed “independent contractors” so, they cannot access many aspects of workplace protections and entitlements.

At Present,
47% of gig work is in medium-skilled jobs,
22% in high-skilled
31% in low-skilled jobs
Trend: concentration of workers in medium-skilled jobs is declining and increasing in low-skilled and high-skilled.
By 2029-30, gig workers are expected to form 6.7% of non-agricultural workforce or 4.1% of the total livelihood workforce in India
NITI Aayog recommended introducing ‘Platform India initiative’ on lines of the ‘Startup India initiative’.

It is a free market system in which temporary positions are common and organisations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements.
According to a report by Boston Consulting Group, India’s gig workforce comprises 15 million workers employed across industries such as software, shared services and professional services.
According to a 2019 report by the India Staffing Federation, India is fifth largest in flexi-staffing globally, after the US, China, Brazil and Japan.

An estimated 56% of new employment in India is being generated by the gig economy companies across both the blue-collar and white-collar workforce.
While the gig economy is prevalent among blue-collar jobs in India, the demand for gig workers in white-collar jobs such as project-specific consultants, salespeople, web designers, content writers and software developers is also emerging.
The gig economy can serve up to 90 million jobs in the non-farm sectors in India with a potential to add 1.25% to the GDP over the "long term".
As India moves towards its stated goal of becoming a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025, the gig economy will be a major building block in bridging the income and unemployment gap.

Businesses got disrupted because of Covid-19 and people were looking for an income source to sustain.
This led to pandemic-led boom in demand for gig workers.
However, as number of gig workers has grown over the years, especially with consumer internet companies like Zomato, Swiggy, Uber, Ola, Urban Clap, etc, the workers have increasingly complained of a fall in their incomes.
It has had two significant implications on the contractual labour ecosystem:
Firstly, it has created new business models to cater to the growing requirement for on-demand staffing.
Secondly, it has once again put the spotlight on the labour codes that recognise gig workers and provide for a universal minimum wage.

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