India’s gig workforce is expanding rapidly, driven by rising living costs and job insecurity, mirroring but also diverging from the US model with a move towards more medium-skilled roles and ongoing debate on regulation and workers’ rights.
India’s growing gig economy is increasingly shaped by the same forces that have long driven flexible work in the United States: rising living costs, job insecurity, technology and a desire for more control over income. As a recent article in Aaj Tak noted, many workers are turning to driving, delivery, cooking and other task-based jobs not as a stopgap, but as a way to manage household budgets in an environment where traditional careers and public-sector jobs can feel harder to secure. The shift reflects a broader change in how many people think about work itself.
That pressure is showing up in the numbers. A 2026 Indeed survey found that 68% of Indian workers said their current income was not enough for a comfortable living, while NITI Aayog has projected that India’s gig workforce could rise from about 7.7 million in 2020-21 to 23.5 million by 2029-30. The same policy body estimated that in 2020-21, 47% of gig work was medium-skilled, 31% low-skilled and 22% high-skilled, suggesting that platform work is no longer confined to low-paid delivery roles.
The United States offers a useful comparison, but not a perfect one. According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, 7.4% of U.S. workers were independent contractors in their main or only job in July 2023, while 4.3% were in contingent jobs with no expectation of lasting long-term employment. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that platform-based gig work expanded sharply between 2012 and 2023, with the number of people receiving 1099 forms from platform companies tripling between 2019 and 2023 and reaching about 5.6 million by 2023.
Still, the American model is broader than app-based driving and delivery. Census Bureau data released in 2025 showed that individual proprietorships in gig-related industries such as couriers, taxi services and janitorial work generated about $152.6 billion in receipts in 2023. Other industry reports have also pointed to the scale of freelance and contract work across technology, creative and consulting fields, underlining that the U.S. gig economy is not just a matter of food couriers and ride-hailing drivers.
In India, however, the debate is less about whether gig work is growing than about what kind of work it is becoming. The Social Security Code, 2020, recognised gig workers and platform workers for the first time and opened the door to social protection schemes, but the bigger questions remain income stability, accident cover and working conditions. India may be moving towards a more flexible labour market, but whether that flexibility becomes opportunity or precarity will depend on regulation, platform responsibility and the strength of the safety net.
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