Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-01
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Marwân-al-Qays Bousmah, Research Officer, Ined (National Institute for Demographic Studies)
An unprecedented study conducted with more than 1,000 platform delivery workers describes the degrading working conditions of this population for which data was lacking. These workers are on the job for more than 63 hours per week, six to seven days out of seven, earning an income well below the poverty line. An enlightening survey at a time when the European directive on digital platform workers, aimed at providing them with greater protection, is to be transposed into French law.
While the image of delivery workers on bicycles or scooters has become a familiar part of the urban landscape and many city dwellers call on them to deliver their meals at home, these precarious workers largely remain invisible in surveys and public statistics.
However, the availability of quality data on the couriers of digital work platforms is a major issue. From a legal standpoint, the transposition into French law of theEuropean Directive (EU) 2024/2831on the legal framework of platform work (which aims to better protect platform workers), expected before December 2, 2026, makes a better understanding of this population indispensable to inform regulatory choices.
On the health front, aAnses report of March 2025reportedof an alarming situation, but also emphasized the lack of data to understand the health status of these workers and to implement appropriate public policies.
It is in this context that theHealth-Run project. Led by an interdisciplinary research team from the Research Institute for Development (IRD) and the National Institute for Demographic Studies (Ined), associative actors working with delivery workers (Association for the Mobilization and Support of Delivery Workers, AMAL; Collective for the Integration and Emancipation of Delivery Workers, Ciel; Bordeaux Delivery Workers’ House; Paris Couriers’ House; Doctors of the World) and a peer group made up of delivery workers or former delivery workers, this project focused on documenting the working conditions as well as the physical and mental health status of delivery workers based on a survey conducted with more than 1,000 of them in Paris and Bordeaux.
The study also looks at exposure to occupational risks, police checks, and discrimination experienced. In what follows, we focus on their profile and working conditions, but the full results are available for consultationhere.
Platform work, what are we talking about?
The rise of digital work platforms in France dates back about fifteen years and results from the conjunction of two series of factors: the adoption of new legal standards (notably theNovelli law of 2008establishing the status of self-employed entrepreneur), on the one hand, and the widespread adoption of information and communication technologies as well as the democratization of their use, on the other. The first progressively flexibilized the labor market and paved the way for the massive employment of independent workers by platforms, while the second provided these platforms with the conditions for their large-scale deployment.
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In the meal delivery sector, digital platforms act as intermediaries between restaurateurs and customers, and between restaurateurs and delivery personnel. Their operationrelies on matching algorithms, pricing and disconnection mechanisms that allow them to manage a vast workforce that is statutorily independent, without having to resort to the traditional management methods of companies.
As for the delivery workers, their status as self-employed contractors places them outside the regulatory framework of health and safety at work applicable to employees. Their situation resembles a return to piecework, understood as contracting mission by mission between principals and performers.
As a result, all contributions entitling to social protection as well as the legal obligations related to worker protection are transferred from the principal to the independent worker himself. This organization places delivery workers in a situation of great precariousness and economic dependence vis-à-vis the platforms, which control access to rides as well as payment methods.
A population difficult to capture in surveys
Investigating platform delivery workers faces several methodological obstacles, the main one being administrative: none of the directories listing companies and their establishments located in France (Siren,SirusorSine), usually used as sampling bases to draw samples for annual business surveys, does not allow reliable and exhaustive identification of platform delivery workers. It is therefore difficult to know precisely their total number and their geographical distribution in France, which makes any approach by traditional sampling impossible.
Another difficulty is posed by the account rental phenomenon which allows couriers to operate under the account of a third party. This phenomenon also compromises the use of data from the platforms themselves, which lack transparency (seeAnses report of March 2025)
The result is that only a direct canvassing protocol in public spaces or in associative places is capable of producing reliable data. This is thechoice made by the Santé-Course project teamA: to go meet the delivery drivers, at their waiting places, in Paris and Bordeaux.
These two cities were chosen because they concentrate a significant share of these workers in France and host the associative structures partnering in the project. To ensure a good representation of the diversity of situations experienced by the delivery workers and thus obtain results that best reflect the reality of the entire population studied, a preliminary mapping of waiting locations and the number of delivery workers frequenting them at different times of the day was carried out through surveying, which then served as the basis for deploying the investigators.
The survey was conducted during the first half of 2025, among delivery workers over 18 years old who had completed at least one delivery.viaa digital platform during the month preceding the survey and capable of giving informed consent. In total, 519 and 485 delivery workers were interviewed in Paris and Bordeaux, respectively.
Nearly one delivery driver out of two spent an entire day without eating during the past twelve months
The results portray a remarkably homogeneous sociodemographic profile across several dimensions. The riders are almost exclusively men (98.9%), immigrants (97.8%), and relatively young—their median age is 30 years. Their level of education, however, is heterogeneous: while a quarter of them have not gone beyond primary level, nearly one in five has pursued higher education, with significant differences between Paris (28.3%) and Bordeaux (9.6%).
Most have arrived recently in France (since 2020 on average) and mainly come from West Africa and South Asia in Paris, from West Africa and North Africa in Bordeaux. Their administrative situation is extremely fragile: nearly two-thirds are without a residence permit.
This administrative precariousness is coupled with material deprivation. The majority do not have personal accommodation: shared housing and staying with acquaintances predominate in Paris, while hostels and collective housing are more common in Bordeaux.
Even more worrying, nearly 18% report living in unstable housing conditions (emergency shelter, squat, or social hotel). Food insecurity is just as pronounced: nearly one in two delivery workers in Paris (48%) and more than one in three in Bordeaux (36.7%) report having gone at least one whole day without eating, due to lack of money, over the past twelve months.
Nearly 73.5% work under the account of a third party
The surveyed individuals have been working for a short time: three-quarters had never worked for a delivery platform before 2021, and more than one-third of Parisian couriers started in 2024 or 2025. Two platforms, Uber Eats and Deliveroo, dominate the market by a wide margin, but the simultaneous use of several applications by couriers (or “multi-apping“) remains very minority, concerning less than 2% of them.
The economic dependence on this activity is massive: 91% state that delivery constitutes the bulk of their income, and about 95% do not engage in any other paid activity nor pursue training in parallel. Dependence on delivery work also appears largely constrained: nine out of ten delivery workers without a residence permit declare that they would cease or drastically reduce this activity in the event of regularization.
Finally, the phenomenon of account renting is massive: three-quarters of delivery workers operate under the account of a third party, a proportion reaching 81% in Paris. This phenomenon, which stems from the administrative precariousness of delivery workers, many of whom are undocumented, considerably complicates the interpretation of statistics produced by the platforms and underscores the need for surveys conducted directly with workers in the field.
On average, 63 hours of work per week at 5.83 euros gross per hour
Delivery drivers earn an average of 1,480 euros gross per month, which amounts to 880 euros net once all activity-related expenses are deducted (including equipment and fuel costs, insurance fees, taxes, and for three-quarters of them, the account rental cost which averages 528 euros per month and alone consumes more than one-third of the gross income).
The average gross hourly rate stands at 5.83 euros, which is well below the hourly minimum wage (11.88 euros at the time of the survey), for considerable volumes of work: on average 63 hours per week, six to seven days out of seven, ten months per year, and even more for those who rent an account. At this pace, they travel on average more than 800 kilometers per month, a mileage likely underestimated due to the omission of certain trips in the platforms’ data.
This overview paints a picture of a population of “working poor“”, forced to an extreme intensity of work to generate a net income that remainswell below the poverty line(set at 1,288 euros net per month for a single person).
The analyses that will be conducted by our team in the coming months aim to shed light on the extent to which this situation affects the health status of delivery workers. More than half of the delivery workers surveyed have already had at least one accident in the course of their work, and 44.8% of them believe that their health has deteriorated compared to when they started their delivery activity.
This project benefited fromfunding from the National Research Agency, from the Convergences Migrations Institute, the City of Paris, Inserm, and the Paris Public Health Institute of Université Paris Cité.
The authors do not work for, advise, hold shares in, or receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and have declared no other affiliation than their research institution.
–ref. Platform delivery workers: an unprecedented survey unveils their extreme precariousness –https://theconversation.com/delivery-workers-of-platforms-a-unique-investigation-lifts-the-veil-on-their-extreme-precariousness-279699