The national average income for Uber drivers is about $20/hr. That's plenty to live off of. The average in Detroit is only $9/hr. That's a tough place to be, but not unique to consulting or gig jobs.
Are you factoring business expenses into that $20/hr, or are you confusing raw revenue with income, and failing to take into account all the risk that Uber offloads onto its contractors?
If you're confused, then you have a lot in common with many Uber drivers!
Yes, that national average of $20/hr is after expenses.
That language, offloads, is loaded. This idea that it's someone else's responsibility to handle even the most trivial of life's decisions for us is toxic. If you don't understand the basic concepts around running a small business, there's plenty of books on the subject in the library.
"In early 2015, a study commissioned by Uber found that drivers in 20 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, were grossing around $17 an hour.... But the $17-an-hour figure was based on data from 2014, when Uber rates in most cities were higher than they were in late 2015. It was also based on gross earnings and did not account for driver expenses."
That Washington Post article is garbage. It cites as the source of its numbers, the Buzzfeed article I quoted. But the only place the number "$20" appears in the Buzzfeed article is this:
"None of these advertisements mention driver expenses. The same goes for the alerts Uber sends to drivers — sometimes five times a day or more — telling them that other drivers on the road were making $20 or $30 an hour in gross fares."
Okay, so the first google result I found had an inflated number. I don't really get what point you're trying to get to. If you think I'm arguing Uber is a good/lucrative place to work, I'm not.
If you're confused, then you have a lot in common with many Uber drivers!