Introduction: In Chile a growing expansion of digital labor platforms has been observed since 2010, especially ride-hailing and delivery platforms. The study of the labor markets of these platforms in Latin American countries, such as Chile, is of great importance to understand the particularities that these companies acquire in contexts other than the global north. Contexts with high rates of informal employment and fragile labor institutions give rise to particular dynamics and configurations in these new labor markets. In turn, the case of Chile is of special interest due to the recent approval of a law (21.431) -the first in Latin America- regulating the contract of location-based platform workers; as well as its pioneering role in the processes of neoliberal modernization and labor flexibilization in the region.

Methods: The reconstruction of the delivery and ride-hailing digital platforms labor market is based on the analysis of data (70 interviews with workers, 14 interviews with key informants, documentary analysis of 8 company websites and reports, review of secondary sources: government administrative reports and reports from international organizations, and field observations) collected between 2019 and 2025 in the framework of three research projects. The empirical corpus and pre-analysis documents previously elaborated were subjected to a reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke) oriented to reconstruct the main characteristics of the labor market of digital delivery and ride-hailing platforms in Chile.

Results: We present a reconstruction of the delivery and ride-hailing digital platforms labor market organized in three axes: (i) a characterization of the companies in the sector, their business model and the profile of the highly heterogeneous workforce they recruit; (ii) a discussion of the main institutional regulations of the sector analyzing two recently approved laws that are impacting this labor market: law 21.431 that regulates the contract of workers of digital service platform companies (ride-hailing and delivery) and law 21.553 that regulates paid passenger transportation applications and (iii) a description of subjective orientations, forms of sociability and collective organization of delivery and ride-hailing platform workers in Chile

Discussion: The analysis identifies 3 main characteristics of this labor market: its precariousness, heterogeneity and the possibility of fragile social inclusion that it allows. These characteristics are discussed in light of the particularities of world of work and the processes of capitalist modernization in Latin America throughout its history, as well as the specific context of the neoliberal development model implemented in Chile in recent decades.