I pretend to understand finance but constantly get surprised. In financial statements, revenue is stated with (can be subtracted by) cost of revenue. Say you'

I pretend to understand finance but constantly get surprised. In financial statements, revenue is stated with (can be subtracted by) cost of revenue. Say you're selling baked beans, the cost of revenue is your beans and the tin and associated packaging. So, the cost of revenue is the drivers pay (contractors, not employees, I guess) and probably a little more marketing stuff baked in. Uber's not public so we're not privy to that. Net revenue is probably a lot smaller, and I'm frankly stunned they have 12k employees and don't believe it. That's especially because a large part of their business (call centre, customer support) is further contracted out and won't count as employee headcount. Wiki cites a BBC article that doesn't make it clear if these 'Uber employees' are actually Uber staff. I do know that Uber 'staff' working in China doing customer support work (probably far more is outsourced in places other than China, I'm just familiar with China) for a variety of outsourcing partners, for example Concentrix, and get a wage of average about USD 600 per month.