Number of gig workers earning over ₹85,000/month rose over 60% since last October: Report

• The number of gig workers earning more than ₹1,50,000 grew by 69%, while gig workers earning between ₹85,000 to ₹1,50,000 saw a spurt by 62%.
  
• Indian startups are preferring to hire more gig workers than permanent employees.
  
• While overall hiring has decreased, salary spends have increased by 64% since October 2021.

Demand for gig professionals has been constantly rising in the country and this is reflected in the 153% growth in their salaries in the last one year, according to a report by Razorpay’s business banking platform RazorpayX Payroll.

However, gig workers earning less than ₹20,000 saw the slowest salary growth at 26% in the last one year, while workers with salary between ₹20,000 to ₹40,000 witnessed a salary growth of 52%.

The number of gig workers earning more than ₹1.5 lakh grew by 69%, while gig workers earning between ₹85,000 to ₹1.5 lakh saw a spurt by 62%. “This shows that gig-workers are gaining more popularity among startups than hiring full-time employees,” said the report.

However, gig workers who are paid less than ₹20,000 form the largest chunk of the gig workers being hired by startups, followed by those who earn anywhere between ₹20,000 to ₹40,000.

Indian startups’ preference for hiring more gig workers is seen in the 61% decline in hiring of new permanent employees since October 2021, while hiring of gig workers rose 15% in the same period.

This dip in hiring is seen across seniority with the CXO hiring noticing a massive normalization, dropping by 93% since Oct 2021, the report added.

“The Indian startup ecosystem has been facing headwinds in the past few months but they have been nothing short of resilient and adaptive to such a dynamic environment. Startups have been optimizing their workforce by building leaner yet stronger teams, keeping in mind the macro-forces,” said Shashank Mehta, vice president and head, RazorpayX.

Despite a drop in hiring, salary spends on a rise

While overall hiring has decreased, salary spends have increased by 64% since October 2021.

“Contrary to previous trends, salaries across different salary levels have been rising gradually but not exponentially, at an average of 12%,” the report said.

However, for gig workers, the growth in salary has been different across different scales. According to the report, the median salaries of gig-workers have increased by 19.9% in the last one year.

The gender pay gap still prevails as salaries of males grew by 29% in the last one year compared to a 22% rise for females during the same period.

This salary gap is accompanied by a lower participation of women in the workforce — for every 2 men that were hired in the last one year, 1 woman was hired.

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