Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Jun;101(3):439-450.
doi: 10.1007/s11524-024-00873-9.

A Price Too High: Injury and Assault among Delivery Gig Workers in New York City

Zoey Laskaris  1 , Mustafa Hussein  2 , Jim P Stimpson  3 , Emilia F Vignola  4 , Zach Shahn  5 , Nevin Cohen  2 , Sherry Baron  6
Affiliations

A Price Too High: Injury and Assault among Delivery Gig Workers in New York City

Zoey Laskaris et al. J Urban Health. 2024 Jun.

Abstract

The occupational health burden and mechanisms that link gig work to health are understudied. We described injury and assault prevalence among food delivery gig workers in New York City (NYC) and assessed the effect of job dependence on injury and assault through work-related mechanisms and across transportation modes (electric bike and moped versus car). Data were collected through a 2022 survey commissioned by the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection among delivery gig workers between October and December 2021 in NYC. We used modified Poisson regression models to estimate the adjusted prevalence rate ratio associations between job dependence and injury and assault. Of 1650 respondents, 66.9% reported that food delivery gig work was their main or only job (i.e., fully dependent). About 21.9% and 20.8% of respondents reported being injured and assaulted, respectively. Injury and assault were more than twice as prevalent among two-wheeled drivers, in comparison to car users. Fully dependent respondents had a 1.61 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.20, 2.16) and a 1.36 (95% CI 1.03, 1.80) times greater prevalence of injury and assault, respectively, than partially dependent respondents after adjusting for age, sex, race and ethnicity, language, employment length, transportation mode, and weekly work hours. These findings suggest that fully dependent food delivery gig workers, especially two-wheeled riders, are highly vulnerable to the negative consequences of working conditions under algorithmic management by the platforms. Improvements to food delivery gig worker health and safety are urgently needed, and company narratives surrounding worker autonomy and flexibility need to be revisited.

Keywords: Assault; Food delivery; Gig economy; Income dependence; Injury; Occupational health; Occupational health disparities; Platform work.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Directed acyclic graph (DAG). The DAG includes sociodemographic and work-related factors measured in the NYC-DCWP survey that are hypothesized to be related to dependence, our main exposure, and injury or assault, our main outcomes, among food delivery gig workers. Regression model adjustments were informed using the DAG
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Tran M, Sokas RK. The gig economy and contingent work: an occupational health assessment. J Occup Environ Med. 2017;59(4):e63–e66. doi: 10.1097/JOM.0000000000000977. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Pew Research Center . The state of gig work in 2021. Washington, DC: The Pew Charitable Trust; 2021.
    1. Vignola EF, Baron S, Abreu Plasencia E, Hussein M, Cohen N. Workers' health under algorithmic management: Emerging findings and urgent research questions. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023;20(2):1239. 10.3390/ijerph20021239. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Taylor K, et al. Physical and psychological hazards in the gig economy system: A systematic review. Saf Sci. 2023;166:106234. 10.1016/j.ssci.2023.106234.
    1. van Doorn N. Platform labor: on the gendered and racialized exploitation of low-income service work in the ‘on-demand’ economy. Inf Commun Soc. 2017;20(6):898–914. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1294194. - DOI