00:00 The gig economy is among the markets that grew immensely during the pandemic
00:04 with demand for delivery services also providing many workers a source of income.
00:08 We hear more from ADB Principal Economist Takashi Yamano,
00:11 joining us now from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
00:15 Thank you so much for joining us, Yamano-san.
00:17 Why did your research focus on the delivery services sector,
00:22 which basically mitigated unemployment in the country during the pandemic?
00:28 Yes, as we saw the expansion of gig economy under the pandemic,
00:34 we wanted to know more about gig economy
00:38 and also the workers' conditions of delivery workers, drivers.
00:44 So we conducted a survey of 1,200 delivery drivers of GrabFood.
00:52 So why did you choose the gig economy and what is the gig economy, Yamano-san?
00:59 Okay, so the gig economy is the economy where workers are paid for the tasks that they conduct.
01:09 They are not paid for the time that they are employed,
01:12 but they are paid on the tasks they conduct.
01:16 And those tasks are provided to them through the platform on the internet.
01:23 And my question is, why did you choose Grab for this survey when during the pandemic,
01:30 there were a lot of other delivery services that also mushroomed
01:34 and also delivered a lot of goods and services to clients and customers?
01:43 Yes, yes. So we wanted to do the study, but we couldn't find the connection with the companies.
01:50 And just by chance, we had the personal contact with the Grab management and through ADB's management.
01:59 And from there, we contacted them and asked for their help.
02:03 To conduct a study like this, we need support from the company
02:08 and Grab kindly provided that access to the drivers.
02:14 And to come up with this conclusion, Yamano-san, what was your sampling?
02:18 How many delivery drivers?
02:21 Where did these delivery drivers come from and were they vaccinated?
02:28 In total, we interviewed 1,200 drivers.
02:33 Some in Manila, some in Cebu, and some in Davao, three major cities in the Philippines.
02:41 Because the survey was conducted last year, we asked them many questions about pandemic and vaccine.
02:48 Basically, by the middle of 2021, they started getting vaccines.
02:55 And by the end of 2021, 100% of them received the vaccine.
03:01 And of course, during the pandemic from March 2020,
03:06 of course, we saw the height in the mid-2020s, of course, in 2021 and until 2022,
03:14 there were millions of Filipinos who were unemployed.
03:18 Even the unemployment rate was close to, if not in the double digits, looking at different data.
03:26 So how did this gig economy reduce the unemployment numbers?
03:34 So in our study, we found that about half of the Grab drivers switched jobs during the pandemic.
03:44 And before the Grab work, their income was about 15,000 pesos per month.
03:52 With Grab, they earned 23,000 pesos per month.
04:00 So their income has increased.
04:02 So joining Grab during the pandemic helped them to increase their income.
04:09 In terms of the overall unemployment of the economy,
04:14 it is difficult to say with this survey because we only interviewed the Grab drivers.
04:19 So we have to do a different type of study to understand the impact of gig economy on the Philippine economy overall.
04:28 So are you planning to follow up this survey, this research with this new study on how the gig economy impacted those?
04:37 We're doing another study with Grab, but we're also interested in knowing other companies, other gig economy companies.
04:46 And this is not the phenomenon in the Philippines only.
04:50 I am now sitting in Bangladesh and I see many drivers and other workers working under the gig economy.
05:00 So we are in general interested in knowing more about gig economy across Asian countries.
05:07 But is the gig economy, now that the economy has opened, flourished,
05:13 and are many of these delivery drivers that you surveyed during the pandemic still continuing to work as delivery services riders?
05:26 At the beginning, before the survey, we thought that the drivers are staying with Grab temporarily.
05:33 They switched jobs during the pandemic.
05:35 Maybe they will go back to their old jobs.
05:38 But 95 percent of the drivers we interviewed, they said they intend to stay with Grab.
05:45 So it seems this is like Grab is providing long term jobs to them.
05:56 So we need to also talk to the workers under the different conditions, different companies, to see whether the workers are staying under the gig economy.
06:12 And also we have to do more studies, not only in the Philippines and other countries, to know the overall size of gig economy.
06:21 By the way, gig economy is not only the workers in the field, it also covers the online workers who conduct tasks online in the room.
06:33 So, you know, this is a new sector in the workforce.
06:38 There is not enough reliable data to know what's going on.
06:44 So we need to keep digging in and asking more questions.
06:48 But potentially boosting the Philippine economy and many economies in ASEAN as well.
06:53 Thank you so much for sharing with us the details of your research.
06:57 Takashi Amano from the Asian Development Bank, joining us from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
