<story><title>Majority of gig economy workers are earning below minimum wage: research</title><url>https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2023/may/gig-economy-worker-research.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>darkwater</author><text>I agree on the spirit of your take but then you should count the commuting hours for the rest of workers as well. If you need 1 hour to get to work and 1 to get back, you are already working (or giving your time to your work place) 50 hours a week</text></item><item><author>CraigJPerry</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; an average of 28 hours&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this hours figure is calculated the same way the gig companies calculate minimum wage.&lt;p&gt;I.e. that 28 hours represents only time spent in performing the delivery task. Any waiting around beforehand when not assigned a task is not counted as working hours for the purposes of min wage calculation. If this is true (and that needs verifying) then this 28 might be a 40 hours where the person was unable to get on with their other life duties even if they weren’t technically working.</text></item><item><author>KMnO4</author><text>I can’t tell how to interpret this. Doing gig work doesn’t pay well, but respondents are doing an average of 28 hours of work per week.&lt;p&gt;Something is missing from the picture. If the takeaway is that gig workers are struggling to pay living expenses, I would expect that to be reflected by working 50-60+ hours per week.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>EatingWithForks</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think this is quite the same, because a gig worker would also have commuting costs to populations that have enough of a customer base. It would more be like you have 4 30min meetings today all with 20 minutes apart (so not enough time to really switch tasks to anything useful) and somehow your workplace doesn&amp;#x27;t count those waiting periods as work and therefore only pay you for 2 hrs work, even though you had to also wait 1 hr collectively during the in-between meetings.</text></comment>
<story><title>Majority of gig economy workers are earning below minimum wage: research</title><url>https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2023/may/gig-economy-worker-research.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>darkwater</author><text>I agree on the spirit of your take but then you should count the commuting hours for the rest of workers as well. If you need 1 hour to get to work and 1 to get back, you are already working (or giving your time to your work place) 50 hours a week</text></item><item><author>CraigJPerry</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; an average of 28 hours&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this hours figure is calculated the same way the gig companies calculate minimum wage.&lt;p&gt;I.e. that 28 hours represents only time spent in performing the delivery task. Any waiting around beforehand when not assigned a task is not counted as working hours for the purposes of min wage calculation. If this is true (and that needs verifying) then this 28 might be a 40 hours where the person was unable to get on with their other life duties even if they weren’t technically working.</text></item><item><author>KMnO4</author><text>I can’t tell how to interpret this. Doing gig work doesn’t pay well, but respondents are doing an average of 28 hours of work per week.&lt;p&gt;Something is missing from the picture. If the takeaway is that gig workers are struggling to pay living expenses, I would expect that to be reflected by working 50-60+ hours per week.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SuperGent</author><text>I think the op here was pointing out that in some gig jobs, you only get paid whilst doing the task (eg delivering the food) rather than the time they are available to work, such as waiting for a food order. The worker can&amp;#x27;t do anything else whilst waiting, but still doesn&amp;#x27;t get paid.</text></comment>