How Much Money Can You Really Make Driving for Uber or Lyft?

If you're looking to make some money, the thought of being a driver for Uber or Lyft can be quite enticing. It can seem like work that's simple and painless enough -- picking people up and delivering them here and there -- but the amount you're likely to earn might surprise you.

The job itself might not be quite what you expected, either. Here's a look at how much money you can make as a driver for Lyft or Uber, along with some things to know about the gigs.

Image source: Getty Images.

How much can you really make driving for Uber or Lyft?

So...how much moola is there in driving for hire, as a part-time or full-time job? Well, one way to find out is via the horse's mouth: Take some rides as a customer and chat up the drivers. They may or may not tell you how much they make, but they'll likely offer insights into what the work is like and they may offer some tips, too. Like the most lucrative areas to target or the best time of day to pick up passengers.

The question of how much these drivers make has been in the news a bit recently, after MIT researchers published a shocking research report suggesting that drivers took in a median income of $3.37 per hour. They added that about three quarters are earning less than minimum wage, while almost a third are losing money. Yikes, right?

Well, it turned out they got some math wrong. There are various ways to measure the pay more accurately, the researchers conceded. One way yielded a median profit of $8.55 per hour, with 54% earning less than minimum wage in their states (as of 2016) and 8% losing money. Another way resulted in a median profit of $10 per hour, with 41% earning less than minimum wage and 4% losing money.

Here's what those two rates amount to by week, month, and year:

Hours Driven Per Week, at $8.55 Per Hour

Earned Per Week

Earned Per Month

Earned Per Year

10	$86	$371	$4,446
20	$171	$741	$8,892
30	$257	$1,112	$13,338
40	$342	$1,482	$17,784
50	$428	$1,853	$22,230

Data source: Author calculations.

Hours Driven Per Week, at $10 Per Hour

Earned Per Week

Earned Per Month

Earned Per Year

10	$100	$433	$5,200
20	$200	$867	$10,400
30	$300	$1,300	$15,600
40	$400	$1,733	$20,800
50	$500	$2,167	$26,000

Data source: Author calculations.

The horse's mouth

They're not the most objective sources, but it can still be worth seeing what the Uber and Lyft companies themselves say about how much you might earn driving for them.

Lyft offers a handy calculator where you can enter a city and how many hours you expect to drive there, and be informed how much you might make. Here are some sample results for someone estimating that they'd drive 20 hours per week in various large and small cities:

City

Estimated Weekly Income

Annual Equivalent

Albuquerque, New Mexico	Up to $400/week	Up to $20,800
Boston	Up to $480/week	Up to $24,960
Chicago	Up to $420/week	Up to $21,840
Davenport, Iowa	Up to $400/week	Up to $20,800
Denver	Up to $400/week	Up to $20,800
Honolulu	Up to $480/week	Up to $24,960
Houston	Up to $400/week	Up to $20,800
Jacksonville, Florida	Up to $400/week	Up to $20,800
Los Angeles	Up to $400/week	Up to $20,800
New York City	Up to $560/week	Up to $29,120
Portland, Maine	Up to $400/week	Up to $20,800
Providence, Rhode Island	Up to $400/week	Up to $20,800
San Francisco	Up to $540/week	Up to $28,080
Seattle	Up to $460/week	Up to $23,920

Data source: Lyft.com.

Uber, meanwhile, tells drivers or would-be drivers: "You can drive and earn as much as you want. And, the more you drive, the more you'll make." Its website doesn't seem to offer estimates of earnings, but its chief economist has pointed to two studies of earnings conducted in recent years that found average hourly earnings of $19.04 per hour and $21.07 per hour.

Another study, by the folks at NerdWallet, found that if you're looking to earn $50,000 per year driving, you would have to drive an average of about 60 trips weekly with Uber and about 84 with Lyft.

Other things to know

Before you invest much time or money signing up to drive for either of these services, do some digging into what the work is really like. If you're running numbers in your head, know that Uber takes 25% of each fare, while Lyft takes 20% to 25%. Remember that you'll be buying your own gasoline and insuring your own car -- though both companies offer insurance coverage during each ride. Your car will likely incur more maintenance costs, too, or won't last as long, if you're putting on a lot of miles driving for income. Also be sure to keep good records of your income and expenses, for tax purposes.

Despite the negative points, driving for Uber or Lyft or some other driving service can still be a good thing to do -- especially if it's just a side gig for some extra income (perhaps to help pay off debt), or if you're retired and looking for some income to augment your Social Security checks.

Social Security, The Dependency Ratio, And Immigration

&l;p&g;&a;nbsp;

&l;img class=&q;dam-image shutterstock size-large wp-image-793749478&q; src=&q;https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/dam/imageserve/793749478/960x0.jpg?fit=scale&q; data-height=&q;645&q; data-width=&q;960&q;&g; Shutterstock

Since the release of the most recent &l;a href=&q;https://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2018/index.html&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;Social Security Trustees&s; Report&l;/a&g; earlier this month, there&s;s been a recognition that 2034 will be here before we know it, and that, subsequent to the depletion of the Trust Fund, when benefits are cut by a quarter, we&s;ll all regret not having done something sooner.&a;nbsp; To be sure, &l;a href=&q;https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2018/05/05/the-social-security-trust-fund-is-real-but-so-what/#78dea5e73c4a&q;&g;my own cynical view&l;/a&g; is that the Trust Fund mechanism, however &q;real&q; it may be, is not what really matters, but rather that the boost in tax receipts from Boomers could have allowed us to build up real assets, or to at any rate, be in a position of a lower federal debt, that we&s;ll &l;a href=&q;https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2018/06/13/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-old-age-dependency-ratio/#539182a39088&q;&g;end up with a &q;Social Security Fix&q;&l;/a&g; along the lines of the &q;doc fix&q; to pay out benefits at their promised level regardless of Trust Fund balances, and that the greater worry is the &l;a href=&q;https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2018/06/13/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-old-age-dependency-ratio/#539182a39088&q;&g;Old Age Dependency Ratio&l;/a&g;, that is, that the combination of decreasing fertility and increasing longevity moving the ratio of working-age adults able to fund the living and medical expenses of the elderly off-kilter.&a;nbsp; We&s;ve just started on a trajectory from one retiree for every 5 workers to one retiree for every 3 workers -- and, what&s;s more, this is based on a standardized definition in which &q;workers&q; are all adults between the ages of 15 - 64, where, in practice, a significant fraction of this group are still in school, out of the workforce raising children, and so on.

Now, there are a number of proposed &q;fixes&q; for this problem, and various countries that are far more worried than the U.S. about this issue are trying to accomplish such changes as greater labor force participation (e.g., more working moms, less travel time to college degrees), more automation/robotics (e.g., as caregivers in nursing homes), and boosts in the country&s;s fertility rate.&a;nbsp; And when Germany was faced with the crisis of skyrocketing numbers of migrants coming to the country in 2015, many pundits and politicians saw this as another means of solving its significantly more severe old age dependency crisis, given that the same forecasts of future populations also show a ratio of one retiree for not quite every two workers.&a;nbsp; To be sure, initial reports were of a highly-skilled workforce of middle-class displaced Syrians, and this is now proving not to be the case, but at the same time, the &l;a href=&q;https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-migration-helps-bump-birth-rate-to-highest-in-decades/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;birth rate in Germany&l;/a&g; is recovering due to the impact of foreign-born women.

All of which leads to the question of whether, in fact, as &l;a href=&q;https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-immigration-is-pure-gravy-for-federal-finances-2018-06-20&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;MarketWatch columnist Caroline Baum&l;/a&g; puts it, &q;&l;span&g;immigration is &a;lsquo;pure gravy&a;rsquo; for federal finances&q; and &q;more high-skilled immigrants could help solve Social Security&a;rsquo;s shortfall&q; in the title and subtitle of an article yesterday.&a;nbsp; Emphasizing that high-skilled immigration is key, she writes:&l;/span&g;

&l;/p&g;&l;blockquote&g;Increased immigration alone &a;mdash; even a program focused on admitting more high-skilled workers &a;mdash; can&a;rsquo;t fix Social Security&a;rsquo;s impending insolvency. But it would help.

Extrapolating from the assumptions in the trustees&a;rsquo; annual report, a 30% annual increase in immigration would eliminate 10% of the Social Security shortfall, according to Charles Blahous, who was a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare from 2010 through 2015 and is currently a senior research strategist at Mercatus.&l;/blockquote&g;

But here&s;s the problem:&a;nbsp; immigration isn&s;t just about changing this ratio.&a;nbsp; It&s;s not just about wages and taxes and costs for education and healthcare and ESL lessons.&a;nbsp; It&s;s not just about GDP growth.&a;nbsp; It&s;s about whether our country continues along its path of division or finds a way to work together for the common good.

After all, the conventional wisdom regarding benefits for the elderly is that we as a country will always keep the spigot flowing because, in the first place, they have time on their hands to vote and to call their representatives and senators, and because, in the second place, even in the absence of the strong elder-revering culture of Asian countries such as Japan or Korea, we as a country will still consider it an obligation to care for those who are unable to care for themselves, seeing our own parents or grandparents in need.&a;nbsp; But as the numbers of the elderly grow, their needs will increasingly compete with other government funding priorities, especially as young adults and families begin looking to the government to provide free or heavily-subsidized university education, parental leave, and childcare and perceiving this as the norm by looking overseas at European countries which do provide these benefits.&a;nbsp; Will the next generation of young adults be as willing to accept the conventional wisdom that the elderly come first, if it is even true now in the first place?

And here&s;s the trouble with seeing immigration as an easy fix:&a;nbsp; this only works if we can rid ourselves of the us-vs.-them mentality.&a;nbsp; Consider the latest census data.&a;nbsp; As &l;a href=&q;https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;reported by Brookings&l;/a&g;, the ethnic/racial make-up of the United States is forecast to be &q;minority-majority&q; in the year 2045; that is, in that year, the non-Hispanic white population, as defined by the Census Bureau, will form less than half the total population of the country.&a;nbsp; However, because of the relatively young age and higher birthrates of the nonwhite and immigrant populations, there will be &q;tipping points&q; for younger ages much sooner.&a;nbsp; In the year 2020, less than half the population of under-18s will be non-Hispanic white; in the year 2027, the same is true for those in their 20s; in the year 2033, for thirty-somethings; and 2041 for forty-somethings.&a;nbsp; This means that, in the year 2034 when (per the current forecast) Congress will be (if they dither now) trying to come up with a fix, there won&s;t just be an age but a racial/ethnic divide, with the seniors whose benefits are at stake predominantly white but young adults and parents of young children nonwhite.&a;nbsp; Will the younger generation still feel a duty to care for their elders, or will that sense of duty be, if not eliminated, then reduced by a feeling, however much or little it may be articulated, that &l;em&g;their&l;/em&g; elders are not these people worrying about benefit cuts at all?&a;nbsp; And, conversely, a cohort of (predominantly-white) elderly folk making voting and lobbying decisions may look at the balance between spending on the young and old differently as well and see the issue of education vs. Medicare spending in terms of hardened battle lines rather than needs of equal importance.

&l;!--nextpage--&g; By no means am I saying that we should stop immigration because &q;they&q; (the newly-arrived immigrants, or nonwhite Americans in general) will not take care of &q;us&q;(white and/or native-born Americans) in our old age.&a;nbsp; But at the same time, we can&s;t take it for granted that all we need to do is boost the number of bodies living in the United States to solve our retirement crisis.

&a;nbsp;

Have something to say?&a;nbsp; Share your thoughts at &l;a href=&q;https://janetheactuary.com/2018/06/22/forbes-post-social-security-the-dependency-ratio-and-immigration/&q; target=&q;_blank&q;&g;janetheactuary.com&l;/a&g;!

Samsonite CEO Resigns as Short-Seller Jolts Luggage Maker

Samsonite International SA’s chief executive officer, Ramesh Tainwala, stepped down after a short-seller’s concerns about accounting practices and corporate governance rattled investors of the world’s largest branded-luggage maker.

Tainwala is stepping down for personal reasons effective May 31, Samsonite said in a statement Friday. Samsonite’s board said Kyle Francis Gendreau, chief financial officer, succeeds Tainwala as CEO. The company also released a detailed response to the report by short seller Blue Orca Capital LLC, repeating that the allegations are “one-sided and misleading” and the “conclusions drawn in the report about the company and its financial results are incorrect.”

Blue Orca, founded by former Glaucus Research Group research director Soren Aandahl, questioned related-party transactions between Samsonite and Indian entities controlled by Tainwala and his family, and a revolving door of auditors at the luggage maker’s South Asia unit. Tainwala was also accused of fraudulently claiming to hold a doctoral degree in business.

The short seller also alleged Samsonite concealed slowing growth with debt-funded acquisitions, including its 2016 purchase of Tumi, and inflated profit margins with questionable accounting linked to its takeovers.

“The company’s board of directors stands behind its track record of transparency and corporate governance,” Samsonite said in the statement. “The company’s consolidated financial statements and the related notes to the consolidated financial statements, which are audited by KPMG LLP, are in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards.”

The company said its purchase accounting associated with the acquisitions of Tumi, and Tumi’s distribution network in certain markets in Asia, was done in conformity with international accounting standards, and operating margins accurately reflect the strong underlying performance of the business.

Tainwala’s departure is the latest fallout from the short-seller’s questions about the dominant player in the $19 billion luggage market, claiming a CEO who has helped steer the company’s growth through acquisitions since taking over in 2014. Samsonite’s shares almost doubled over the past two years, driven by a spate of deals including the $1.8 billion purchase of Tumi Holdings Ltd.

The Mansfield, Massachusetts-based company’s shares plunged 21 percent on Thursday and Friday last week after the report was issued, erasing $1.3 billion in market capitalization. Trading in Hong Kong, which has been halted this week, is expected to resume Friday morning.

Tainwala, 59, started off as a commodities trader before getting into the luggage business as a maker of the plastic sheets that are molded into suitcases. His ties as a supplier to Samsonite led to a joint venture in the late 1990s, Samsonite South Asia, to manufacture international-quality luggage in India. Tainwala subsequently rose within the ranks at Samsonite, becoming head of Asia-Pacific by 2011 and CEO in 2014.

Samsonite Chairman Timothy Parker supported Tainwala as recently as last week, saying in a statement, “I have full confidence in Ramesh’s capabilities as CEO.”

— With assistance by Daniela Wei, and Rachel Chang

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