The Gig Trap: Algorithmic, Wage and Labor Exploitation in Platform Work in the US

By Human Rights Watch. Published May 12, 2025.

Summary: Documents how algorithmic management and surveillance in gig platforms enable wage theft and labor exploitation.

Relevance: Central to Labor & Economy: documents concretely how algorithmic wage-setting and monitoring on gig platforms produce wage theft and precarity, directly relevant to social workers whose clients rely on gig work as a primary or supplemental income source.

Key findings: A survey of 127 Texas gig workers across seven platforms (Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Shipt, Favor, Amazon Flex) found a median pay of $5.12/hour after expenses, nearly 30% below federal minimum wage; 95 of 127 struggled to afford housing. Six of seven platforms used opaque pay algorithms workers said they “have no idea how… works,” and 40 of 127 had been deactivated, with nearly half of those later cleared of wrongdoing.

Read the original: https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/05/12/the-gig-trap/algorithmic-wage-and-labor-exploitation-in-platform-work-in-the-us