To begin with an interesting fact, the term “gig” originated in the year 1920 which was short for “engagement”. First used by jazz musicians, the term was used to define their style and type of work - temporary, flexible and unpredictable. However, it was actually World War II that led to the emergence of large enterprises that offered temporary workers to fill in the gaps within the workforce - introducing the “gig economy”. The gig economy is an extremely massive industry and is defined by the Government of the United Kingdom as: ‘An exchange of labour for money between individuals or companies via digital platforms that actively facilitate matching between providers and customers, on a short-term and payment-by-task basis.’

Source: ILO, 2020

According to the International Labour Organisation(ILO) the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in global loss of 8.8 percent of working hours in 2020. (ILO, 2021). This, however, has affected the workers in the informal economy massively. Keeping in mind that most workers cannot afford to stay unemployed, nations must address and safeguard the employment rights of the informal workers. In the developing world, approximately 70 percent of workers earn income with difficulty via informal employment. In comparison to formal employment, the workers in the informal economy have wages which are lesser, social protection is nonexistent and working conditions are unfair. Gig workers tend to have less coverage by social protection schemes due to little or no accessibility to social protection systems. Additionally, the coverage of gig workers requires the need to overcome key challenges such as, poor accessibility, limited awareness, lack of data transfer and portability. 

Currently, it is mainly the developed countries which have adequate policies for the social protection of their gig workers, which include: 

• Turkey, Canada, France, the Republic of Korea and the United States have extended social protection schemes to gig workers - particularly when it comes to health protection and old age pensions. 
• France and Germany have introduced a model to finance social security for artists and professionals in the creative sector. 
• Although the self-employed are often left out from unemployment insurance schemes, Croatia, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Poland have offered compulsory unemployment insurance coverage to the self-employed workers. 
• An unemployment allowance for self-employed workers was introduced in France in 2019.
• Austria, Colombia, Iceland, Luxembourg, Malta, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden have extended employment injury policies to the gig workers on a mandatory basis. (ILO, 2021)

Source: The Guardian, 2022

This brings us to the question of whether we need to merge stakeholders, policymakers and governments from around the world to develop more policies around the world - especially in the developing countries for a stronger gig worker economy.