Some influencer here in Norway tried to work for a food-delivery service, called Wolt. His workday lasted 9.5 hrs, and he made 1607 NOK, and had 784 NOK in costs related to his car (fuel, toll), or 823 NOK before taxes. That's 86 NOK / hr., before taxes, or roughly $7.7 in USD (1 USD = 11.15). A full work-year here is 1950 hours, so if he consistently made that, it would put him around 167k NOK / year.<p>In comparison, median salary in Norway is is around 608k - so he made over 3.5x less than the median salary. It should be noted that salaries in Norway are very much centered around the mean, with not a whole lot of variance. The lowest paid workers, like cleaners, call center workers, etc. will make maybe 300k - 400k, while higher paid workers like engineers, lawyers, dentists, GPs, etc. will make 1.5x-3x the median or mean salary.<p>In any case, gig workers seem to earn a horrible salary<p>He'd live in poverty on a salary like that, and likely be better off by claiming welfare money.
Not too surprising. That California Prop 22 from 2020 and similar props throughout the country is finally paying off. A waning economy and rising costs also make the gig workers suffer the most.<p>>In response to the report, an Uber spokesperson told BI that its drivers make more than $30 an hour on average.<p>Gotta love the ol' "well the average is decent" line in times of unprecedented standard deviations. Though there may be even more creative accounting for their average compared to:<p>>Uber hide-hailing drivers saw their earnings for 2024 fall 3.4% on average to $513 a week, according to a study released Tuesday by data analytics company Gridwise. At the same time, Uber drivers worked 0.8% more hours in 2024.<p>roughly $13/hr.
I've been basically begging my friends that drive for Uber/Lyft in SF to figure out a game plan. I've completely switched over to Waymo at this point because it's just a superior experience in numerous ways. I have to imagine the human drivers will be fighting over scraps in a few more years.<p>I truly do empathize with the situation, and I understand this report applies to more than just Uber/Lyft drivers in one specific city, but, at the same time, I find it frustrating to see a glaring paradigm shift being met with apathy - as if the value they provide through their work won't drop markedly in the face of automation.
I recently was traveling a lot and would take a uber multiple times a day. I asked all my drivers what they thought of the gig. To my surprise, most were pretty happy about it. The ones that were happy really liked the flexibility and autonomy. They could start and stop when they wanted, work where they wanted, take vacation when they wanted, etc. the ones that were unhappy complained about the pay and lack of benefits.<p>It really drove home for me that a job is more than just wages. If your goal is to maximize your income, gig work is probably not for you. But the nice thing is, no one is making you do it. If you don’t like the pay, go do something else. But it seems like gig work fills a niche that works really well for some people.
I rode in an Uber home from a rehab hospital recently after a long stay in the ICU. The guy was driving a Land Rover. I was a bit confused to say the least. The wear and tear and depreciation of that vehicle has to be crazy.
Illegal immigration has really hit gig work wages. So many people without valid work visas are sharing/renting uber and other accounts to do work. At least in Texas, I would guess 30-40% of gig workers are not legally allowed to be doing it.
What people don’t understand is that pay isn’t everything.<p>Like remote work, people will accept being paid less to enjoy the benefits of flexibility that gig work provides, which ends up being better than getting paid more but being stuck to a rigid routine.<p>There is also more upward mobility in gig work as you can optimize over time to earn more, which isn’t possible in some jobs.<p>Believe me, if gig work was so shitty, people wouldn’t be doing it.<p>There’s also some hacks to reduce individual expenses like sharing a car with someone else who works different hours, etc.<p>The problem isn’t that gig work is low pay, the real problem is everything has gotten so expensive. Gig work was always going to be low pay.
There must be some magic caloric boundary where "work" becomes a "labour" camp in all but name and a dollar value attached to that.
idk why government don't make law that clearly says, if someone works for more than 20 hours they should be considered full time employee and deserves all the extra perks and benefits.