Structural transformation and the platform economy in the labour market : the case of drivers and delivery workers in Brazil

For nearly a decade, the Brazilian labour market has suffered from periods of deep crisis marked by the growth of unemployment and informality. In this general context, platform jobs, which emerged around 2016, appear with unequaled dynamism in job creation. However, it is difficult to quantify and qualify this phenomenon to date due to the lack of a suitable measuring instrument in Brazil and on a global scale. The nature of jobs and their quality is largely unknown. Therefore, this study has a dual objective. On the methodological front, it aims to contribute to the debate on the concepts and statistical tools needed for measuring the scale and the characteristics of this new type of job reliably. The empirical work is mainly based on the intensive processing of micro?data from the PNAD Contínua (the Brazilian Labour Force Survey). The changes observed in the various job characteristics over the long term as a result of the analysis provide an assessment of the relevance of the approach. On the analytical front, we propose to draw up a panorama as reliable as possible of platform employment in Brazil in its different dimensions (job structure and workers' characteristics, working conditions and earnings, professional trajectories, contribution to the household economy), focusing on the most ?visible? of them: drivers and delivery workers. We show that these platform jobs in the transport sector represent a real opportunity. The vast majority of the jobs created are permanent and contribute significantly to the household economy. They are not just occasional jobs for supplementary income. Nor are they a stepping stone to formal employment. However, the jobs are of low quality: in terms of working conditions, they fall between informal and formal workers but closer to the former. Moreover, it should be stressed that their situation tends to deteriorate over time, becoming increasingly precarious.