Uber Drivers Make Less Than $10 An Hour According To New Study

In 2014, Uber bragged that the median income for its New York City drivers was $90,766 a year. However, a new survey finds that Uber drivers make about half that amount in New York City, and that’s without taking out expenses. A new poll of Uber drivers found that the ride-sharing freelancers are making less than $10 an hour after you account for expenditures.

The 2018 Ridester Independent Driver-Earnings Survey (RIDES) interviewed 2,625 Uber drivers, which included screenshots of driver earnings from 719 drivers. Based on the responses from the Uber freelancers they discovered that the median hourly pay with tip for UberX drivers (which was 74.7% of respondents in the survey) in the U.S. is $14.73. However, that doesn’t account the expenses that the driver is on the hook for.

“That figure includes tips but doesn’t account for expenses like insurance, gas and car depreciation incurred while working,” according to Ridester. “Using Ridester’s low-end estimate of $5 per hour in vehicle costs, drivers would bring in $9.73 per hour and potentially much less.” The salary also doesn’t factor in taxes as well as employee benefits such as healthcare, which isn’t provided by Uber.

That would mean that an Uber driver would make around $20,000, but they would still owe taxes on that amount. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary of taxi drivers, ride-hailing drivers, and chauffeurs in 2017 was $11.96. It should be noted that drivers can make more on the higher Uber classifications such as UberSELECT, UberBLACK, UberSUV, and UberLUX, but generally that also means that your costs are higher as well.

The survey by Ridester, which shares “valuable resources with all rideshare users and drivers,” also found that 58.3% of respondents were over 50-years-old and 55.1% said they have a college education; 10.7% had a post-graduate degree. Drivers gave Uber a rating of 2.9 stars on earnings satisfaction and 2.9 stars for the company’s leadership. The drivers were 22.8% more positive about the company’s direction under new Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who was put in charge of the worldwide ride-sharing company in August 2017.

Recode points out that a JPMorgan Chase study found that ride-sharing drivers in the U.S. are “making half what they did five years ago.”

Another survey of over 1,100 Uber and Lyft drivers from earlier this year by MIT, also found disappointing pay checks for the ride-sharing drivers. The MIT survey noted that after driving costs, the median pretax profit earned from driving for Lyft and Uber is $3.37 per hour, far less than the national minimum wage of $7.25.

Uber and Lyft both attacked the study, which is titled “The Economics of Ride-Hailing: Driver Revenue, Expenses and Taxes.” “While the paper is certainly attention-grabbing, its methodology and findings are deeply flawed,” an Uber spokesperson said. “We’ve reached out to the paper’s authors to share our concerns and suggest ways we might work together to refine their approach.” A Lyft spokesperson said the researchers made “questionable assumptions.”

As the gig economy grows, more scrutiny will be placed on companies that utilize freelance workers. Approximately 5 percent of the U.S. workforce is freelancers, up from 2 percent in 2013.

This study comes as Amazon is in the news after they were pressured to increase their pay for employees. Amazon increased their minimum wage to $15 per hour, affecting 250,000 U.S. full-time, part-time, and temporary employees and its over 100,000 seasonal workers.

[Recode]