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Maybe Uber and Lyft drivers *can* make a living

March 6, 2018

How much do Lyft and Uber drivers really make? After reporting in a study that their median take-home pay was just 3.37 per hour—and then getting called out by Uber’s CEO—researchers have significantly revised their findings.

Closer to a living wage: Lead author Stephen Zoepf of Stanford University released a statement on Twitter saying that two different methods of recalculating the hourly wage gave him and his colleagues a new salary figure of either $8.55 or $10 per hour, after expenses. Zoepf’s team will be doing a larger revision of the paper over the next few weeks.

Still lowballing it?: Uber and Lyft are adamant that even the new numbers underestimate what drivers are actually paid. “While the revised results are not as inaccurate as the original findings, driver earnings are still understated,” says Lyft’s director of communications, Adrian Durbin.

The truth is out there: Depending on who’s doing the math, estimates range from $8.55 (Zoepf, et al.) to over $21 an hour (Uber). In other words, we’re nowhere near a consensus on how much drivers in the gig economy make.

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