[eqdw]

Ways in which this headline is potentially misleading:

1) Driving for Uber/Lyft/etc is not a full time job, and was not intended to be a full time job. It's a piecemeal work side job. The flexibility of working when you want, and not working when you don't want, is valuable and you don't get it for free.

2) "Profit" is not income. This is profit net of expenses. Expenses that, among other things, you can write off against your income. And to pre-empt the "Uber drivers can't afford tax accountants" criticism, Turbotax costs $50

3) The profitability of Uber driving can vary dramatically place to place. I often ask Uber drivers in SF how they like their jobs, what they make, etc. They consistently report to me that they make between $40k and $55k/yr. This is significantly higher than "below minimum wage". OTOH, I imagine that driving Ubers in a low density place, where cabs are less financially viable (say, Fargo) is a shitty job. Averaging across the San Franciscos and the Fargos of the country to say "Uber is a terrible job" is not an accurate representation of the facts.

[tom_mellior]

> Driving for Uber/Lyft/etc is not a full time job [...] They consistently report to me that they make between $40k and $55k/yr.

Is this 55k from part-time Ubering, or is this 55k in total, most of which comes from their "real" full-time job and a small fraction from Ubering, or is it 55k from full-time Ubering in direct contradiction of what you said, or what?

[AlphaSite]

I was talking to a guy and he said he gets around 30usd/h from full item Ubering.

[tom_mellior]

Assuming this is comparable to the above figures of 40k to 55k per year, and assuming 50 weeks worked per year, that comes out to 27 to 37 hours driving per week. Maybe not full time, but hard to argue that it's just a small side thing.

[balls187]

> I often ask Uber drivers in SF how they like their jobs, what they make, etc.

When I query drivers, I often get the same sentiment that they are with Uber by choice. Unhappy uber drivers leave, either because the platform penalizes them by way of bad ratings, the economics don't work, or some other reason.

While the numbers from the study seem abysmal when distilled down to the per-hour profit, it hasn't dissuaded drivers from stick with the platform as a viable mean of income.

It sounds like the 1100 drivers surveyed displayed different characteristics. I'd be more interested in more granular data, such as the per-hour rate based on the number of miles driven, length of tenure, location, star rating.

[CodeWriter23]

Saying “rideshare is supposed to be a part time job”, in addition to spreading baseless anti-driver rhetoric, indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of the scale Lyft and Uber operate at. If every driver worked part time, everyone would pay big surge pricing for every ride.

Edit, adding: In Lyft’s ExpressDrive program, the quota to get free rental is 105 rides per week. They apparently think it should be a full time job. You might get 3 rides per hour during peak periods, if nobody barfs in your car after closing the bar, but mostly you’ll average about 2 rides per hour over a week.

[s73v3r_]

"Driving for Uber/Lyft/etc is not a full time job, and was not intended to be a full time job."

It absolutely is, and the way their incentives are structured, they clearly do mean it to be.

[tryitnow]

With regard to point (2) I'm pretty sure the $50 Turbotax package is not sufficient for business for taxpayers who are self-employed.

[laborious]

Turbotax has a $120 "self employed" version custom-tailored to that situation. More than $50, but still not exorbitant.