Most Gig Workers Now Call It Their Main Income

The money math behind full-time gig work

For years the standard story about gig work was that it topped up a paycheck from a regular job. That story no longer fits most of the people doing the work. According to the Branch + Stripe Gig Workforce Index, fifty-six percent of gig workers surveyed say platform work now accounts for the majority of their household income. The side hustle grew up.

The index, released in August, surveyed one thousand twenty-seven gig and flexible workers over June and July, across sectors including delivery, rideshare, healthcare, caregiving, logistics, home services, creative work, tutoring, and online marketplaces, according to HR Tech Edge. Nearly half of respondents view gig work as either a permanent way to earn or a stepping stone toward starting their own business, with twenty-three percent naming entrepreneurship outright as the goal. Branch and Stripe say the findings show platform work has become a core part of the modern workforce, and payments are now part of the product experience rather than a back-office function.

The shift lands in a strange moment for extra work. A separate LendingTree survey found average monthly side hustle income reached one thousand two hundred forty-two dollars this year, up from one thousand two hundred fifteen dollars last year and four hundred seventy-three dollars in twenty twenty-two. At the same time, only thirty-three percent of Americans currently have a side hustle, down from forty-four percent in twenty twenty-two, according to Money Under 30's analysis of the survey. The workers who stayed got pickier: one consistent gig, chosen for its hourly rate, instead of a pile of random app tasks. Fewer people hustle, but the ones who do earn more.

Payday-to-payday, at scale

Living off gig income is a different life than picking up a few extra shifts. Seventy-eight percent of gig workers report their earnings swing week to week, and sixty-eight percent say they could not cover a sudden four hundred dollar emergency expense, according to the Recruiting Headlines breakdown of the survey. Seventy-two percent spend their earnings within twenty-four hours of getting paid: forty-five percent of the spending goes straight to bills and twenty-seven percent to gas and groceries. Only twelve percent manage to put any earnings into personal savings.

The job also eats a large share of what it pays. Fifty-three percent of gig workers spend more than a quarter of their gross earnings directly on job-related expenses, and transportation is the top out-of-pocket cost, named by sixty-one percent of respondents. Forty-nine percent say they lack access to the kind of startup capital that would let them turn the gig into a real business, so many are stuck cycling earnings back into fuel and upkeep instead of building anything bigger.

Speed is the job now

Platform work runs on reflexes. More than sixty percent of gig workers say they have to accept a posted gig within two minutes before it disappears, and about three in ten get less than thirty seconds. To keep earnings stable, forty-six percent juggle three or more different apps at once, stacking offers the way a full-time employee might stack meetings.

Workers are also drafting AI into the daily routine. Seventy-seven percent of gig workers believe AI can assist their work, with fifty percent pointing to finding new clients, according to the survey. The same tools that once powered side hustles on the margins are now part of how people run a full-time independent operation. Gen Z, notably, has been pulling back from extra work overall: the LendingTree survey found Gen Z side hustle participation fell from sixty-two percent in twenty twenty-two to forty-three percent this year.

What platforms will have to build next

When the platform is the employer in everything but name, the payment experience becomes the employment experience. Eighty-nine percent of gig workers said they would be more likely to choose one platform over another if it offered faster and more reliable payouts, and fast payouts ranked second only to higher pay as the reason workers stay loyal. Nearly a third said they had quit an app entirely after a payment delay or glitch.

Eighty-four percent of gig workers said financial management tools built into their platforms would be valuable for managing cash flow and budgeting. Branch founder and CEO Atif Siddiqi said in the PR Newswire release that "getting paid quickly matters, but so does what happens next" once gig work becomes someone's primary income, and that platforms supporting workers' broader financial lives will be best positioned to keep them. Workers increasingly expect the companies connecting them with work to supply financial infrastructure, not just a marketplace and a payout button, HR Tech Edge reported, and the earnings breakdown shows the workers who stayed with side hustles nearly tripled their monthly income since twenty twenty-two.

Gig work grew up on the promise of flexibility as a bonus. For most gig workers now, flexibility is the job itself. For more on how delivery pay rules and app-driven workplaces keep shifting, read Seattle's delivery pay law experiment and the AI gig marketplace that went viral on TikTok, or why side hustle burnout keeps spreading.