# Here's How Much Uber Drivers Really Make



## AllenChicago

http://time.com/money/4845407/uber-drivers-really-make-per-hour/?xid=homepage
*Here's How Much Uber Drivers Really Make*
TIME (time.com) MONEY  July 10, 2017 by Rob Wile

How much money do Uber drivers really earn? Since launching in 2009, the company has often changed its pricing model, and the amount of money Uber drivers make has shifted as well. Yet the company has become so large, and been studied so much, that a clearer picture has emerged of what a driver can truly expect to make.

A driver's location, hours driven (including time of day/week), and personal expenses can all affect how much a person will earn picking up rides for Uber. The issue is also complicated because the Uber earning studies conducted over the years each take different approaches. So we've reviewed several studies to get a handle on how much drivers make.

The most recent earnings study comes from loan company Earnest, which used loan application data that included Uber earnings to show that Uber can be among the most lucrative platforms for "gig economy" workers.

Earnest found that the median Uber driver makes $155 a month - third most among the nine gig platforms surveyed. (People working with Airbnb and Lyft tended to earned more.) Meanwhile, the average Uber driver makes $364 a month - fourth most - suggesting some drivers are taking home the lion's share of possible earnings.

Earnest did not ask drivers to say whether these figures were gross or net. (Expenses vary widely, but can subtract 20% to 30% of one's gross earnings driving for Uber.) The study also did not factor in how many hours individuals worked to earn this income, so we can't gauge how much drivers made on an hourly basis. Here were the totals for all platforms analyzed by Earnest, with Uber highlighted.








An Uber driver who runs a popular RideShare blog chronicling the ins-and-outs of gig driving, told _Money_ the Earnest study's findings were "a little low but in the right ballpark" of previous studies.

The blogger [Campbell] recently conducted his own study, which polled 1,150 drivers from both Uber and Lyft. He found that the average Uber driver made $15.68 per hour before factoring in expenses like gas, maintenance, and depreciation. (Lyft drivers in the survey made $17.50 per hour before expenses, and reported much higher satisfaction than Uber drivers.) The study also revealed an interesting breakdown that showed hourly earnings on Uber and Lyft deteriorating by age.
Campbell surmised that the higher earnings among young drivers could "be a function of what hours were worked." Drivers can pick up more passengers and therefore make more money if they're willing to work during peak-demand periods, which often mean late nights on weekends.

Uber charges different rates in different markets, and big, bustling cities tend to have more passengers in need of rides, so it makes sense that driver earnings have also been found to vary widely by city. This image from SherpaShare shows this breakdown from May 2015, and whether gross earnings (before expenses) had increased or decreased since January 2015.








​To get an idea of how an individual driver's earnings are affected by changing one's location and company affiliation, Money spoke to a driver who wished to be identified simply as Matt, in his mid-20s. He recently moved from Raleigh, N.C., to San Francisco and switched from Uber to Lyft. Matt said he now makes nearly $20 an hour after expenses compared with only $6 per hour in North Carolina. He added that Lyft has seen a recent boost in ridership thanks to the #DeleteUber campaign that began after allegations emerged of sexual harassment at the company.

For even more background on how much Uber drivers make, consider a 2015 study funded by Uber, which found that in its top-20 cities drivers averaged more than $19 an hour in earnings before expenses. However, a year later, internal Uber figures provided to Buzzfeed showed that after expenses were factored in, drivers in three markets - Detroit, Houston, and Denver - earned only $8.77, $10.75, and $13.17 per hour, respectively.

Lately, Campbell says the overall mood among Uber drivers is improving. The company launched a "180 Days of Change" campaign in June to make the driver experience better, including the long-awaited addition of an option for passengers to tip drivers through the Uber app.

"I think turnover is still a big problem for Uber but it seems like they're getting serious about addressing some of the root causes," Campbell said. "They did more for the driver's experience on the first day of their '180 Days of Change' initiative than they have in a couple years so I'm optimistic that they will continue to improve the driver experience and improve retention."

We reached out to Uber for comment on the findings in these different studies, and have not heard back from the company.


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## Michael - Cleveland

AllenChicago said:


> http://time.com/money/4845407/uber-drivers-really-make-per-hour/?xid=homepage
> *Here's How Much Uber Drivers Really Make*



https://www.earnest.com/blog/sharing-economy-income-data/
*How Much Are People Making From the Sharing Economy?*
earnest.com June 13, 2017

They drive you home when you're drunk. They deliver your groceries and office lunches. They rent their homes to you for vacation stays and fix leaky faucets in yours.

They are the workers of the sharing economy.

Coined shortly after the financial crisis in 2009, the so-called "gig economy" or "sharing economy" refers to the growing cadre of companies like Airbnb, Lyft, and TaskRabbit-platforms that employ temporary workers who provide a wide variety of services: delivery, ridesharing, rentals, and odd jobs. A recent Pew study estimated that nearly a quarter of all Americans earn some money through these platforms.

But what is the real financial benefit to individuals?

In a new analysis from Earnest, we looked at anonymized data from tens of thousands of loan applicants to see how much people are earning on side-gig platforms and how these platforms stack up against each other.

We looked at a span of data accounting for just over two years, and for each worker, we analyzed a pay period of between one and 27 months. We do not know how many hours of work the income represents for each platform, as each one has a unique pricing and commission structure. Here's what we found.

*Key Takeaways*

85% of side-gig workers make less than $500 per month.
Airbnb hosts, on average, make nearly triple all other workers and nearly half of hosts make more than $500 per month.
Lyft and Uber drivers earn approximately the same average per month, though drivers who work on both earn more on Uber.
TaskRabbit workers earn 3x compared to Fiverr workers.







In our data, on all but Lyft and Uber, we excluded any worker who made a total $10 or less from a platform to eliminate data points that could simply represent a refund from the company. For Lyft and Uber, we excluded anyone with a total income of $50 or less. Then we tallied the average monthly incomes made by workers at each company.








Making an average of $924 off their platform each month, Airbnb hosts make nearly three times as much as other workers. Workers at the general task-service platform, TaskRabbit, rank second at $380 per month. Overall, Lyft and Uber drivers make roughly the same average per month at $377 and $364 respectively. We also observed that nearly a quarter of Lyft drivers also earned income from Uber-and of that subset, we saw that the average income was actually higher for Uber ($481 vs $396.)

Of course, on all of these platforms, there is a wide range of earners. Several Airbnb hosts in our records, for instance, made over $10,000 per month, while others made less than $200.

To really understand these averages above, we took a deeper look at these ranges. Below, we've charted out the income distribution for each company. The figures represent the percentage of workers who fall into each month income bracket.








Airbnb hosts enjoy the highest average monthly earnings because there is a much wider range of income distribution on that platform than at other companies: Nearly half of all hosts make more than $500 per month.

Conversely, the majority of workers at some other companies (Etsy, Uber, Fiverr) fall into the $100 or under per month bracket.

Tallying all of these companies up, the overall distribution tilts strongly toward the lower end.








Some 84% of all gig economy workers make less than $500 per month-but in particular, workers at Getaround (98.3% under $500 per month), Fiverr (96.3%), and Etsy (95%) have especially high percentages of low-earners. Reasons for the low income could vary-some workers may be simply trying the platform, or put in very few hours.

Lyft, Taskrabbit, and Airbnb seem to beat this "84% under $500" average.








It might be easy to look at this data and assume that gig economy workers are working at below market rates. After all, $500 per month is hardly a livable wage. But as the industry category name implies, the vast majority of these workers are utilizing these platforms to make a little extra cash as a side-gig-not to forage a full-time living.


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