Pay tumbles 53% for ‘gig’ drivers: survey

The gig economy is delivering everything but rising salaries.

Drivers for services like Uber, Lyft, UberEats and Postmates made 53 percent less last year than they did in 2013, according to an eye-opening study out Monday.

The monthly compensation for the part-time drivers fell 47 percent, to $783, last year from 2013, according to the study conducted by the JP Morgan Chase Institute.

In 2013, the monthly compensation was $1,469, according to the study, which looked at deposits into Chase accounts made by customers who identified themselves as working in the gig economy.

The gig economy has grown increasingly popular. Fewer than 2 percent of Americans reported having participated in it in 2013, and close to 5 percent say they were a part of it as of March of this year.

Nearly half that number — 2.4 percent — worked in transportation.

JPMorgan suggested that the growing number of drivers could have put downward pressure on hourly wages, or that drivers may be averaging fewer hours than before.

“Regardless of whether the drop in earnings was caused by a fall in wages or hours or both,” the study reads, “it indicates that driving has become less and less likely to replace a fulltime job over the past five years, as more drivers have joined the market.”

Uber countered on Monday that “the growth in on-demand work is driven, in large part, by people who use platforms like Uber on the side.”

“Given the growing share of people who use platforms like Uber only occasionally, a more appropriate metric to focus on would be average hourly earnings, which have remained steady over time,” an Uber spokeswoman said in a statement.