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Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

theguardian.com

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Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#261

Post by elgenie »

malandrew wrote: post #246
elgenie wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study's not published and expecting the two page preview of the working paper to have a 'discussion of potential problems with methodology' section is utterly unrealistic. They're clearly trying to gauge incremental costs, not fixed costs, and each of insurance/maintenance/repairs/fuel/depreciation are incremental. The breakdown between the personal and ride-hail vehicle use is part of the study and appears in th…

> The study's not published and expecting the two page preview of the working paper to have a 'discussion of potential problems with methodology' section is utterly unrealistic. In that case, it's grossly irresponsible to publish what little they have. Society is still struggling to correct the "statistic" that a woman earns 70 cents for every dollar a man earns. This new statistic about how much TNC drivers make is…

That's a misunderstanding of what a sunk cost is. Which of the following are sunk costs?

A car has a resale value. That resale value decreases with each additional mile on the odometer. That's the depreciation incremental cost.

A car requires insurance. Insurance rates fluctuate based on miles driven per period (and also based on whether the car is used in ride-sharing).

A car requires maintenance and repairs are incurred on a per mile basis. For example, when a $30 oil change is needed every 3K miles with 300 miles of trips to the grocery store and 2700 miles of Ubering, it'd be asinine to assign that cost in a way other than $27 of that going to Ubering.

A car requires fuel. The same logic as the oil change; $30 for gas to drive 30 miles to the grocery store and 270 for Uber can be uniformly distributed per-mile.

Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#262

Post by timcederman »

lsc wrote: post #196
timcederman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 200+ rides, I don't think I've ever once been in a $40k+ Uber vehicle unless I've used Uber Select.

hm. It appears I'm off on my car prices. I thought japanese minivans were in that range, and with pool, those are really common. looking, they look closer to $30K than $40K if you don't spring for the extras. doing a survey of car manufacturer websites, my impression of how much vehicles cost appears to be around $10K high across the board. The base model honda accord is only $23K? that is way less than I thought. I…

A small economy car on a lease is only $100/month, nothing down. The economics are decent.

Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#263

Post by lsc »

timcederman wrote: post #262
lsc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hm. It appears I'm off on my car prices. I thought japanese minivans were in that range, and with pool, those are really common. looking, they look closer to $30K than $40K if you don't spring for the extras. doing a survey of car manufacturer websites, my impression of how much vehicles cost appears to be around $10K high across the board. The base model honda accord is only $23K? that is way less than I thought. I…

A small economy car on a lease is only $100/month, nothing down. The economics are decent.

Leases have significant per mile fees. Your uber driver isn't staying below 15k miles a year.

You would either want a loan or a very high millage lease, both of which cost rather more.

But the interesting part is that I don't see so many of the smallest cars that would work for this, Even though while not that cheap, they are certainly cheaper than larger cars. I wonder why that is?

Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#264

Post by cm2012 »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #258
trendia wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent internal Uber study found that long-term drivers learn how to optimize their rides for the highest fares. So there are significant differences between what the median driver makes and what the "pro" Uber drivers make.

This is the concern I hear from policy makers. If Uber/Lyft drivers are "optimizing" their rides and only seeking out the most profitable routes and areas, then cities no longer have a egalitarian transportation system. Need a ride and you're in an obscure part of town? Welp too bad.

Taxis did this 100x worse.

Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#265

Post by mygo »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #242
Clanan wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing you said refutes my claim. All research requires some sort of funding. Humans have biases which can affect their judgment/work. If you think potential conflicts should automatically make a paper worthless, then you're basically excluding the vast majority of scientific work. Read the paper and decide whether its methodology and results are valid and correct. Don't just look at a list of sponsors and walk away…

> Don't just look at a list of sponsors and walk away - that's just intellectual laziness. Is everyone supposed to personally fully read every individual scientific study? That doesn't scale. The only way it works is to have experts you trust to give you the truth, which is what the scientists are supposed to be, but the funding source undermines the trust.

Nah, you’re just lazy. You’re not supposed to read every single piece of research in existence. No one person does that. Not even the scientists.

But if the topic interests you enough for you to comment about it and there is a research paper that you can read, then just read the dang paper or let other people make decisions for you. Nobody has to give you the truth. And, on top of that, even if the results of research are quantified, there may not even be an unquestionable “truth” — the implications of the research can still be up to interpretation.

Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#266

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mygo wrote: post #265
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't just look at a list of sponsors and walk away - that's just intellectual laziness. Is everyone supposed to personally fully read every individual scientific study? That doesn't scale. The only way it works is to have experts you trust to give you the truth, which is what the scientists are supposed to be, but the funding source undermines the trust.

Nah, you’re just lazy. You’re not supposed to read every single piece of research in existence. No one person does that. Not even the scientists. But if the topic interests you enough for you to comment about it and there is a research paper that you can read, then just read the dang paper or let other people make decisions for you. Nobody has to give you the truth. And, on top of that, even if the results of researc…

> Nobody has to give you the truth.

Then you have to figure it out for yourself. For everything. Which, again, doesn't scale.

At some point you do need to trust some people to make some decisions for you. But what kind of fool trusts someone with a conflict of interest?

Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#267

Post by lsc »

jrs95 wrote: post #233
lsc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hm. It appears I'm off on my car prices. I thought japanese minivans were in that range, and with pool, those are really common. looking, they look closer to $30K than $40K if you don't spring for the extras. doing a survey of car manufacturer websites, my impression of how much vehicles cost appears to be around $10K high across the board. The base model honda accord is only $23K? that is way less than I thought. I…

Honestly, if you're buying a new vehicle to use for Uber you're insane. Perhaps they got more people roped into that or leasing than they ought to have and that's responsible for these issues. But you can get a used car that's more than adequate at a reasonable price even with terrible credit. At least in my area, most of the vehicles have been 5+ year old Toyotas (almost entirely Camrys, and a Prius or two) that wer…

That'd be like 10K for another 100K miles? probably more with maintenance. I'm not sure that's a better deal than a $18K civic brand new, if you really planned for driving a few hundred thousand miles, especially when you factor in gas differentials.

My impression is that the cost per mile on new cars is pretty good if you actually drive them for a few hundred thousand miles. The savings on used cars mostly comes in if you don't plan on driving enough to wear a new car out before getting your next car; otherwise transaction costs can be... significant.

Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#268

Post by crdoconnor »

grandmczeb wrote: post #259
crdoconnor wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it absolutely doesn't. "Technological progress and the resulting rise in the skill premium (positives for growth and productivity) and the decline of some labor market institutions have contributed to inequality in both advanced economies and EMDCs. " Emphasis mine. That ^^^ was literally the first reason given in the article. The second point it makes is about the role policy-making plays, which of course is prob…

It's true that a decrease in labor power has probably contributed to rising inequality. That's not what you stated though; "It's a factor" and "it's the most important factor" are separate points. If you read the study I linked, you'll see that in advanced economies globalization and the skill premium have had roughly the same or larger impact as changes in labor institutions (which is a much bigger category than jus…

>If you read the study I linked, you'll see that in advanced economies globalization and the skill premium have had roughly the same or larger impact

The paper you linked was not studying that. It was not measuring the impact of union density on inequality whereas the study I linked to had a methodology for measuring the two, correlating them and teasing out a causal impact. Your paper was simply going over the various issues surrounding inequality and talking about them.

The other stuff you mentioned is a combination of wrong and not relevant to this topic.

Incidentally, that stuff about licensing requirements being "the bane of every worker's existence" that you read about can typically be traced back to lobby institutions that are linked to Charles and David Koch (e.g. CATO). They started publishing "research" and press releases about the onerousness of stuff like hairdresser regulation in the 90s and early 00s after some of the brothers' high profile fights with the EPA. Isn't it fun to learn where your propaganda comes from and why? :)

Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#269

Post by eevilspock »

davebryand wrote: post #52

I question the authenticity of the $3.37 number when I see that the paper this article references was published by an organization funded by these bodies: Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, BP, ClearPath Foundation, Conoco Phillips, Duke Energy, Electricité de France, EnBW, ENGIE, ENI, Eversource, Exelon Corporation, ExxonMobil, Gas Natural Fenosa, GE, Golden Spread Electric Cooperative, Inc., Iberdrola, IHI Corpo…

Another conflict of interest worth examining is that of readers of these studies. Is it in your interest to discount or promote the study? Does your lifestyle, paycheck, politics or identity (as in identity politics) bias your read?

What would a rejection of business models such as Uber's mean to SV, it's means of wealth, it's self-image?

Re: Uber and Lyft drivers' median hourly wage is just $3.37, report finds

#270

Post by eevilspock »

malandrew wrote: post #227
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct that I used a hypothetical methodology. That's because -- and this is the real problem -- finding the flaw in a specific methodology is a lot of work. It's often not just one thing that throws the numbers off by 200%, it's one thing that throws them off by 12%, then another by 7%, and twenty other little things that add and multiply up to an inaccurate overall conclusion. It can take multiple hours to…

> most other jobs don't let you count transportation expenses against the hourly wage Good job in pointing out this huge flaw in this study. Every minimum wage job I ever worked required me to have a vehicle to get to and from that job. That means that every minimum wage job out there where you need to pay for transportation to get to it is paying below minimum wage as the end the day. Those who live in cities have t…

So everyone here is agreeing that things are pretty fucked for people relying on minimum wage jobs, putting aside whether Uber/Lyft pay below or above minimum.
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