Cycles of all sorts

In many Asian cities where they are widely used, rickshaw driving provides essential employment for recent immigrants from rural areas, generally impoverished men. One study in Bangladesh showed that rickshaw driving was connected with some increases in income for poor agricultural laborers who moved to urban areas, but that the extreme physical demands of the job meant that these benefits decreased for long-term drivers.  In Jakarta, most rickshaw drivers in the 1980s were former landless agricultural laborers from rural areas of Java.

In 2003, Dhaka rickshaw drivers earned an estimated average of Tk 143 (US$2.38) per day, of which they paid about Tk 50 (US$0.80) to rent the rickshaw for a day. Older, long-term drivers earned substantially less. A 1988-89 survey found that Jakarta drivers earned a daily average of Rp. 2722 (US$ 1.57). These wages, while widely considered very low for such physically demanding work, do in some situations compare favorably to other jobs available to unskilled workers.

In many cities, most drivers do not own their own rickshaws; instead, they rent them from their owners, some of whom own many rickshaws. Driver-ownership rates vary widely.

In Delhi, a 1980 study found only one percent of drivers owned their vehicles, but ownership rates in several other Indian cities were much higher, including fifteen percent in Hyderabad and twenty-two percent in Faridabad. A 1977 study in Chiang Mai, Thailand found that 44% of rickshaw drivers were owners.

In Bangladesh, driver-ownership is usually highest in rural areas and lowest in the larger cities. Most rickshaws in that country are owned by individuals who have only one or two of them, but some owners in the largest cities own several hundred.