Gig economy and Labour income share: evidence from Chinese food delivery platforms

The gig economy has profoundly impacted labour markets by expanding job opportunities, raising workers’ wages, and restructuring traditional employment relationships. As gig workers are not formal employees, firms can flexibly procure labour through markets, reshaping income distribution patterns. Leveraging the staggered entry of food delivery platforms into 229 Chinese cities as a quasinatural experiment, this study employs a staggered difference-in-differences approach with 2006–2019 data from A-share listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges in China to examine how the gig economy affects firms’ labour income share (LIS). Results indicate that platform entry significantly lowers firms’ LIS by 1.67%, with stronger negative effects observed for labour-intensive firms and cities with net population inflows, advanced mobile infrastructure, and larger populations. Mechanism analysis reveals that this effect operates through increased relative costs for low-skilled labour, reduced low-skilled employment, and accelerated capital deepening. Further analysis demonstrates that enterprises’ adaptive adjustments in response to the gig economy have significantly enhanced their total factor productivity. We advocate for proactive governance mechanisms that strengthen legal frameworks and establish rights protection systems tailored to new labour relations to enhance LIS and improve income distribution equity.