March 7, 2018

Correction: Uber drivers making more than MIT prof thought

Update on a story the Review ran a few days ago

Gizmodo-Last week, researchers with MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy released a working paper with survey data from 1,100 Uber and Lyft drivers, saying the “detailed vehicle cost information” provided showed that after accounting for expenses those drivers were making a median profit of $3.37 per hour.

Both companies are pushing back on the findings, Uber’s chief economist Jonathan Hall challenged the paper’s methodology. Per Reuters, Hall claimed that a misleading survey question and “inconsistent logic” meant that the “earnings figures suggested in the paper are less than half the hourly earnings numbers reported in the very survey the paper derives its data from.” The MIT paper’s lead author Stephen Zoepf agreed and said he’d look to see whether re-running the analysis with different assumptions would result in different data—and on Monday, he tweeted a statement showing that using two different methodologies suggested by Hall resulted in median wages between $8.55–$10 an hour after expenses.

No comments: