Gig Economy : Pre covid

During the pre- covid era, gig economy was still under development and the ratio of jobs
seekers and jobs in gig economy was relatively lower. As jobs were less and employers
hesitated to employ gig workers due lack of security, reliability and pre-conceived notion of
poor quality of work. Employers and workers were both struggling to deal with these issues.
Initially, only bootstrapping entrepreneurs, cash-strapped ventures and small businesses used
to hire freelancers as support workers
Although, rapid digitization and technological revolution, gave the gig economy workers
opportunity to recognize their work and made space for themselves by various online
platforms. On the other hand, employers across the world have now access to talents across
the world at minimal rate. The online platforms created a sense of belongingness and reliability
through zoom meetings , google meets etc. Gig Economy workers were commonly employed in
menial work and companies did not trust them for productive work which adds to growth and
productivity of an organization. Also, due to presence of huge spam data and fake profiles
there was sense of insecurity.
The majority of Gig workers interfaced through technology platforms unlike traditional
unorganized workforce, which is crucial distinguishing factor between Gig and unorganized
workers. General accepted notion of Gig workers are independent contract workers, online
platform workers, freelancers who are hired for a targeted project/task requirements and
usually remunerated post-delivery of the project/task.
According to 2018 report the rise of the Gig economy in India, 70 per cent of respondents from
the hiring side said they had used Gig workers at least once or twice for solving organizational
issues in 2018 with nearly 45 per cent of the human resource (HR) heads surveyed wanting to
hire a Gig worker to supplement skills of the existing workforce. Further, a report 'The Future of
Work is Anywhere - Gig Workforce’ revealed that in 2018, men and women had an almost
50:50 split in the Gig economy against the traditional workforce where the ratio is about 70:30.
Globally, in 2018, digital gig economy contributed gross volume of 204bn . Majorly
Transportation-based services contributed to over 50% of this value which included Uber, Ola
and various other taxi services. Comparatively, the Asset-Sharing sector – notably smaller than
Transportation Services at $62B – is the second largest contributor, leading Professional
Services and by handmade goods, household good significant margin.
So, due to change in trend and culture, large scale e-commerce players, food and cab
aggregators have started employing flexi -staff and is moving towards dynamic work culture
which is acting as a catalyst for the growth of gig economy.
https://www.investindia.gov.in/team-india-blogs/gig-economy-shaping-future-work