COVID-19 Pandemic and the Rising Gig Economy: An Emerging Perspective

Abstract

The Gig economy refers to short term jobs, contract or freelance work and flexi timing jobs as opposed to traditional full-time labor, which has witnessed a rapid growth in the last decade across the globe. Digital platforms have largely developed a free market system where independent workers connect with the buyers of the services. The Platform or Gig economy has grown at a much faster pace than ever before from the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. Since the COVID-19 lockdown, the labor market has been affected in a drastic way and a trend towards short-term and temporary jobs has become commonplace. The Economic Survey, 2020-21 highlights the growing importance of Gig economy in India amid the pandemic-induced lockdown which has led to an immense growth in the online retail business. The employers began layoffs and instead engaged freelancers or flexi staff to bring down their overhead costs. Many studies have been conducted now on assessing the impact of the ongoing pandemic on the economy and stock markets, however, very few studies focus on the influence the pandemic had on the Gig economy. The present study attempts to fill this gap by evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on the Gig economy by assessing whether the increase in new COVID-19 cases lead to an increase in the number of gig workers in the Indian economy, or in other words, exerts a significant impact on the Indian gig economy or not.