Bangkok
MEDIUM · sourced, not yet live-verified
Pending live-verification. The source URLs have not yet been fetched and archived in this round; the city will return to a HIGH classification once that is done. Original rationale: Multi-source Bangkok triangulation: ILO Thailand official policy paper "How to improve working conditions for gig workers in Thailand" (cites EIC survey 9,387 respondents Aug 2017) + Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia academic survey of 435 riders in Bangkok+3 provinces (Wantanasombut & Teerakowitkajorn) + Al Jazeera Sept 2023 Bangkok Grab driver investigation (38 baht/order, 900-2000 baht/day) + ERI SalaryExpert Thailand Grab driver ฿167/hr 2025. ฿82-85/hr range × $0.029 USD = $2.40. No Fairwork Thailand exists.
Only HIGH-confidence cities carry a full verification audit. See the methodology for what each tier means.
Earnings (USD per hour)
Source: ILO Thailand platform worker report
What would you take home in Bangkok?
Take-home, weekly
$54
Take-home, monthly
$234
Gross, weekly
$72
Gross, monthly
$312
With a 1BR apartment outside the city centre at $316/mo, rent costs more than your monthly take-home (135% of monthly net).
Take-home is gross hourly minus an estimated tax/expense rate per country. See the methodology page for the derivation. This widget assumes you actually work the hours you set. For app-based delivery, a portion of logged-in time is unpaid waiting; the headline rate reflects engaged time only where regulators have defined it.
Cost of living vs. earnings
That works out to roughly 41 hours per week. Rent at $316 per month is 76 percent of gross monthly earnings, which puts a Bangkok delivery driver in HUD's “severely cost-burdened” band by the federal definition (over 30 percent of gross income on housing). Measured against net take-home pay, which is what a worker actually has available to spend, the same rent is 102 percent. Affordable rent at this earnings rate, defined by HUD as no more than 30 percent of gross income, would be around $120 per month. Across the 46 cities in the dataset, Bangkok ranks 25th for hours needed to cover rent, where lower is better.
Pay vs. local labour market
Gross hourly is 139% of local minimum wage, 64% of local median.
Notes
Outside-of-center rent estimated as 70% of city-center rent pending Round D1 verification.
View Bangkok on the interactive map
See full source citations for this city on the sources page. Read about how each metric is computed in the methodology.
Primary earnings source: www.ilo.org/media/381846/download · archived