Real wages of gig workers fell 11% to Rs 11,963 per month in 2022 from levels in 2019, thanks to rising fuel costs and consumer price inflation, a study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) has noted.
However, the nominal income of the surveyed food delivery workers went up by 4% to Rs 20,026 in 2022, from Rs 19,239 per month in 2019. The survey, which covered 924 food delivery workers, found that the real wages of gig workers delivering food parcels across cities have fallen. On the other hand, the performance of foodtech platforms in terms of unit economics has improved.
Bornali Bhandari, who lead the study at the NCAER, noted that there was a mix of workers — for some, the gross income rose while for others, incomes did not go up between their previous jobs and food delivery. “However, their net incomes definitely decreased because of the high input cost of fuel and rising inflation,” Bhandari noted. Industry estimates peg the number of food delivery workers on platforms like Zomato and Swiggy at 700,000 to 1 million, though the numbers do vary with seasonality of demand.
The report found it has been a double whammy for workers because a larger share of their income was being spent on fuel.
“On one hand, it has become increasingly difficult to achieve daily/weekly targets over time, which affects their ability to earn additional income from incentives; this was due to increased traffic and greater competition. On the other hand, fuel costs had gone up,” the study said.
Using nominal numbers, to assess whether workers were able to meet their monthly expenditures from their platform incomes, the survey found that long-shift workers were breaking even in 2019 and 2020 but not in 2021 and 2022. “As fuel costs and overall inflation started to rise, workers found it increasingly difficult to meet monthly expenditure from their monthly income.”