At 2 a.m. on a Tuesday, Maria delivers her 14th food order of the night, calculating whether she’s earned enough to cover her daughter’s medication. Like millions of gig workers worldwide, she exists in a labor limbo—neither employee nor truly independent, working without benefits, security or the dignity that Catholic social teaching insists belongs to every worker. As the gig economy reshapes labor globally, the church’s teachings on work offer both a prophetic critique and a path forward.
As of 2020, nearly 36 percent of U.S. workers participated in the gig economy, with delivery drivers and rideshare operators being the most visible. These workers—overwhelmingly immigrants, people of color or those shut out of traditional employment—average less than minimum wage after expenses while bearing all the risks traditionally shouldered by employers, including securing their own health insurance, vehicle insurance and absorbing costs from equipment failures or accidents. They represent not innovation but regression to pre-Industrial Revolution labor conditions wrapped in Silicon Valley rhetoric.
Catholic social teaching, beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum,” has consistently affirmed that work possesses inherent dignity because humans participate in God’s creative action through labor. This dignity demands just wages, reasonable hours and the right to organize—precisely what the gig economy’s algorithmic management systems are designed to circumvent. When Uber calls drivers “partners” while denying them employee protections, it violates what Pope John Paul II called the “priority of labor over capital.”
The theological principle at stake runs deeper than economics. The church teaches that work serves not merely to produce goods but to perfect the worker, contributing to human flourishing and social cohesion. Gig work’s isolation—drivers alone in cars, delivery workers racing against app timers—fractures the communal dimension of labor that Catholic social teaching considers essential. Workers become atomized units of production rather than persons in relationship.
Recent developments have intensified this crisis. California’s Proposition 22, upheld by that state’s Supreme Court in 2024, cemented gig workers’ exclusion from basic labor protections. Companies had spent over $200 million to pass the ballot measure and avoid treating workers as employees. Meanwhile, algorithmic wage systems grow increasingly opaque, with workers unable to predict or control their earnings. This uncertainty violates Catholic social teaching’s insistence on wages sufficient for workers to support families with dignity.
The gig economy also embodies what Pope Francis called the “economy of exclusion.” While executives celebrate “flexibility,” workers experience precarity: They are unable to access health care, save for retirement or plan beyond the next shift. This manufactured insecurity serves corporate profits while shifting economic risks entirely onto those least able to bear them. It represents a fundamental disorder in economic relationships that Catholic social teaching has long warned against.
The church’s response cannot be simple condemnation. Many gig workers value genuine flexibility, especially immigrants seeking work arrangements that accommodate varying circumstances or parents balancing work with caregiving. The challenge lies in preserving authentic flexibility while ensuring justice—a balance Catholic social teaching’s principle of subsidiarity can help achieve. Rather than top-down regulations or laissez-faire exploitation, subsidiarity suggests solutions emerging from workers themselves, supported by broader social structures.
Some promising models already exist. Platform cooperatives—where workers collectively own and govern the apps that connect them with customers—embody Catholic social teaching’s support for worker participation in management. Cities like Seattle that have implemented minimum wage guarantees for gig workers while preserving scheduling flexibility show that protection and flexibility need not be mutually exclusive. Catholic institutions could lead by supporting such initiatives and refusing to use exploitative gig services.
And the church must examine its own practices. When Catholic universities rely on adjunct professors in gig-like conditions, or parishes use app-based services without questioning their ethics, they participate in the very structures their social teaching criticizes. Integrity demands that Catholic institutions model just labor practices, perhaps by developing alternative platforms that respect worker dignity.
Moreover, Catholics must resist the temptation to individualize systemic problems. While personal charity toward gig workers matters—tipping generously, treating drivers respectfully—such gestures cannot substitute for structural justice. The good Samaritan bound wounds, but justice requires asking why robbers lurk on the road to Jericho.
As gig work becomes many parishioners’ reality, the church must adapt its ministry. This might mean offering financial literacy programs addressing gig workers’ unique challenges, providing community spaces countering their isolation or advocating for portable benefits following workers from employer to employer. Parishes could become nodes of solidarity in an atomized economy.
Ultimately, the gig economy poses a fundamental question: Will technology serve human dignity or subvert it? Catholic social teaching insists that economic systems exist for persons, not persons for economic systems. The current gig economy inverts this relationship, using technology to resurrect old-fashioned exploitation with modern efficiency.
The path forward requires recovering the Catholic vision of work as participation in God’s creative action, deserving of protection, community and just compensation. This means supporting worker organizing, demanding corporate accountability and imagining new economic forms that honor both flexibility and security.
As Maria finishes another late-night shift, the church’s call remains clear: No technological innovation justifies denying workers their God-given dignity. In the gig economy’s disruption lies an opportunity to forge forms of work that truly serve human flourishing.
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