Food delivery platform workers have witnessed decline in the average real monthly income between 2019 and 2022, a latest report released by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) showed.
However, the real income of long-shift employees (working for 11-hour shifts) declined 11.1 per cent to Rs 11,963 in 2022 from Rs 13,470 in 2019, that of employees working for five-hour shifts fell 10.4 per cent to Rs 7,157 from Rs 7,999 in the same period.
The report titled “Socio-economic Impact Assessment of Food Delivery Platform Workers” highlighted that as the working hours remained the same for the short-shift workers, the long-shift employees saw a 19% increase in their working hours to 10.9 hours a day, as compared to 9.3 hours in their previous jobs.
“Platform workers reported that real incomes had gone down over time. That is primarily due to inflation. For long-shift workers, it has become harder to achieve targets (which translates into higher income) due to increased traffic and rising competition,” it added.
The real income of all workers has gone down as the ability to meet monthly expenditure out of monthly incomes of long-shift workers has also gone down.
NCAER assessed 924 food delivery platform workers from one company across 28 cities based on their activity status, tenure levels, and engagement types.
Food delivery platforms have helped create jobs for young workers in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, with a majority of the platform workers currently employed in their hometowns, with 84% respondents below the age of 35.
The active long-shift worker on average works 27.7 per cent longer than the average urban youth male worker, but generates only 5 per cent more net income, the report said.