Dr Ganga Tilakaratna discusses the prospects and challenges of the rising gig economy in Sri Lanka and highlights the need for strengthening social protection to protect the workers

10 January 2025

IPS Research Fellow and Head of Poverty and Social Welfare Policy Research, Dr Ganga Tilakaratna highlighted the prospects of the rising gig economy in addressing the prevailing high youth unemployment and low female labour force participation and identified the lack of social protection coverage, limited skill development opportunities and the country’s digital divide as key challenges that need to be addressed. She made these remarks while speaking at the Panel session on “Dynamics of Emerging Labour Markets and Changing Industrial Relations: Perspectives from South Asia” organised by the Institute of Human Development (IHD) and South Asian Network on Economic Modelling (SANEM) on the 10th January 2025, at the 65th Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) Conference held in Bengaluru, India.

Dr Tilakaratna further highlighted that Sri Lanka’s share of the global online worker population has increased from 0.7% in 2017 to 1.3% in 2024 ranking Sri Lanka 15 out of the 184 countries as per the Online Labour Index developed by The Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford and explained that the rise of online gig work can be attributed to the flexibility in work conditions, remote work options, ability to earn an additional income on top of one’s primary employment and lack of alternative employment opportunities in the traditional labour market

During the ISLE conference, Dr Tilakaratna also served as the Chair of the Technical session where papers were presented by several PhD and postgraduate students on various issues related to the dynamics of labour markets in South Asian countries. The conference was jointly organised by the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru in collaboration with the Department of Labour, Government of Karnataka, India, and was attended by over 400 participants from South Asia.