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Uber Drivers and Other Gig Economy Workers Are Earning Half What They Did Five Years Ago (recode.net)
According to a new study by the JPMorgan Chase Instittue, drivers who transport people via apps (e.g. Uber, Lyft, Uber Eats, Postmates) made 53 percent less in 2017 than they did in 2013. Recode reports: The average monthly payments to those who worked for a transportation app in a given month declined to $783 from $1,469. Meanwhile, people working for leasing apps -- Airbnb, Turo, Parklee and other apps that let you rent assets like your home, car or parking space -- saw their incomes from those platforms rise 69 percent to $1,736 on average.
This is happening as online gig work has become more popular, thanks in large part to the growth in the number of transportation jobs. The share of the working population that has participated in the online gig economy at any point in a year rose from less than 2 percent in 2013 to nearly 5 percent in 2018. There are a number of potential reasons why the average pay for gig economy drivers has gone down. It could be any or all of the below, according to JPMorgan: drivers on average are working fewer hours; demand hasn't increased to meet the increased number of drivers; trip prices have fallen; or platforms are paying drivers lower rates.
This is happening as online gig work has become more popular, thanks in large part to the growth in the number of transportation jobs. The share of the working population that has participated in the online gig economy at any point in a year rose from less than 2 percent in 2013 to nearly 5 percent in 2018. There are a number of potential reasons why the average pay for gig economy drivers has gone down. It could be any or all of the below, according to JPMorgan: drivers on average are working fewer hours; demand hasn't increased to meet the increased number of drivers; trip prices have fallen; or platforms are paying drivers lower rates.
Uber keeps shoveling VC money into the furnace hoping to one day make itself profitable. In the meantime, with dwindling cash reserves, they can't afford to pay drivers as much as they used to.
They're trying to undercut taxis and public transportation, then jack prices sky-high after they kill the competition. Hope they epically fail, crash, and burn.
The headline is VERY misleading. They are talking about MONTHLY income and NOT hourly income. So what is happening is that new Uber drivers are far more likely to be part timers, putting in a few hours of driving at the end of the day to earn some extra income.
About 80% of Uber drivers drive for less than 35 hours per week. Over 60% have another job that is their main income.
Five years ago, the average Uber driver was more likely to be a professional driver. They had no presence in smaller cities, they had a lot less UberX and a lot more Uber Black. Today, in my home town, it's still just UberX - no fancy options, the best you can get is UberXL so you can have some luggage space. But we do have Uber...
As I've said elsewhere, I'm happy to burn VC money for cheap rides, but I'd use Uber or Lyft even if they weren't cheaper than official taxis. I know what I'm getting and who drives it, I never have to worry about bullshit claims that the credit card machine doesn't work, I don't have to carry cash at all. All of those are very valuable qualities. Do they screw drivers over? Probably so, but traditional cab companies are little if any better under ideal conditions.
At least I can pay good, old-fashioned, cash for a taxi and not have my CC info, email, name, and other ID info in a database for eternity. Uber/Lyft/the rest of the "rideshare" techbro firms = no privacy.
Yeah, yeah, taxis have cameras, but facial recognition is still a lot harder than ID from an account "verified" with CC info. F Uber, Lyft, Via, and the rest of them.
nobody knows since the data is _only_ monthly.
No it isn't. One article written by one lazy journalist is not the only data available.
Uber has said that the reason for the decline is drivers working fewer hours. According to Uber, more than 50% of their drivers now work less than 10 hours per week.
The job market today is stronger than it was 4 years ago, and it makes no sense for workers to accept half the pay they did then for the same job. People are not that stupid, and that is NOT happening.
The more "gig economy workers" there are, the lower the rates will be.
Not necessarily. You are only looking at one side. As the "gig economy" grows, there will be more "sellers" (workers) but also more buyers of their services.
The number of Uber drivers has gone up, but so has the number of riders.
Cool story, bro. You go on paying at least double, waiting in inordinate amount of time, carrying cash and wasting your time.
You and Fluffernutter, our favorite angry cabbie roommates or something?
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
I somehow doubt an industry fueled by the likes of Uber who supported it for the sole reason of skirting minimum wage laws is going to generate higher wages.
About 80% of Uber drivers drive for less than 35 hours per week.
I'm an Uber/Lyft driver. And another misleading statistic is the number of hours they tell us we've worked.
And that's because both companies do not count the waiting time we take to wait for rides to accept, nor the time we use to get back to a location without getting a ride request. So if the app tells me I've worked 35 hours or 45 hours this week and done my 130 rides for the week, it usually means I've actually worked roughly 50+ to 60+ hours a week. It's all very misleading.
And to some of you wondering how this is possible. Why aren't drivers quitting? Well, I'd say 99% of drivers did quit three or four years ago. Me, I am part of the new batch of replacement drivers. I've seen my income slowly get reduced overtime, but definitely not as much as the drivers did four years ago when they went through a massive price cut.
This artificial scarcity of housing thing gets brought up here, mostly blaming owners of single family homes for engaging in zoning restrictions so they can get rich on housing price increases.
I watch the sale prices for houses in my neighborhood and if I extrapolate those prices out 10 years when my mortgage is paid off and I sell, the price I will get for my house isn't even a profit compared to what I paid in principal, interest, taxes and insurance and maintenance costs.
It's feels like a windfall because it's a giant lump sum run up by inflation, but it's more or less break even at best. I literally would have been much better off had I rented cheap suburban apartments and put the difference in some stock index fund.
I think the complaints about artificial scarcity are kind of accident-of-history. Up until not that long ago, most people didn't *want* to live in the city. Old housing stock, bad schools, crime, high taxes. The US spent decades migrating to the suburbs. In the last 20-some years, many cities have seen a renaissance, including suburban boomers retiring and moving back into core cities.
Since so much development focus at a macroeconomic level was focused on the suburbs, the cities were underdeveloped. Now that everybody wants to live there -- young people, retirees, etc, the housing growth is lagging the demand, and the demand is driving prices way up.
The job market today is weaker than it was five years ago. There are less people making an actual living page.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Corruption aside, the fact that the medallion is 'worth' $500K in the first place attests to its scarcity - which is, mostly, the point. Medallions were created to keep the city streets from being overcrowded with taxis. I suppose the reduced hours of Uber drivers could be attributed at least in part to the fact that the streets are again overcrowded - due to Uber's skirting of the medallion system. Not much profit in driving an empty car around the city - or charging a flat rate for a trip that ends up taking too long due to excessive traffic.
So, medallions are a form of market manipulation that has the effect of 1) increasing the value of a taxi, 2) reducing overall city traffic and yes, 3) opening up a new channel for payola. But 3 is certainly not the primary purpose - and could be shut down by effective law enforcement. And if you think 1) and 2) are important, but 3) is inevitable - and assuming your not some hardcore anarchist, how do you distinguish between enforceable and unenforceable laws before you decide to give up on them.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...