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> Every single Uber driver I've ever asked does it as a full-time job There's an interesting statistical effect here. Let's say there are 50 Uber drivers. 10

> Every single Uber driver I've ever asked does it as a full-time job There's an interesting statistical effect here. Let's say there are 50 Uber drivers. 10 of them are doing it full-time; the others are doing it 5 hours a week for some additional income. That's 10 * 40 + 40 * 5 = 600 hours of driving per week, of which 400 is by the full-time drivers. So if you ask your driver whether they are full-time, they will say "yes" with about 2/3 probability, but the number of part-time drivers greatly exceeds the number of full-time drivers. This effect is even stronger if you typically take Uber at times when part-time drivers are less likely to drive. To your last point, location does matter a great deal here. Anecdotally, in my suburban area, I know a fair number of stay-at-home parents who do some driving on the side, esp. while the kids are in school. They most emphatically do not want to be driving full-time, or doing anything else full-time: if they wanted a full-time job they would not be stay-at-home parents. I am quite certain that this dynamic does not hold across all Uber markets, by any means.

fucking_tragedy 7y ago
This is a false dichotomy. There are plenty of employer-employee relationships that are flexible and not full-time. I'd wager to say that the majority of Americans are employed in such an arrangement.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  You would lose that wager badly; the vast majority of Americans that are in the workforce at all are employed full-time. See, e.g., https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm
  - fucking_tragedy 7y ago
    Looks like I was wrong. Thanks for the reference and stats!
- olivermarks 7y ago
  'Flexible working' has been sold as 'the gig economy' but the reality is many people have to scrabble around doing multiple jobs to make ends meet and are playing musical chairs with short term jobs suddenly ending. Uber et al have put a glamorous sheen on this as they flaunt the wealth they have raised as middle men around mobile phone apps and enterprise scale back ends.
staticcaucasian 7y ago
I meet a lot who are students (eg, nursing). Driving for Uber is their only job, they'll do it as many hours as they can get, approaching FT. But they need the flexibility, they might do it in the short-term when they're between school terms or clinicals, and oftentimes they are free at the points where we need the most drivers on the road.
- mymythisisthis 7y ago
  This is more of a college funding problem.

fucking_tragedy 7y ago

This is a false dichotomy. There are plenty of employer-employee relationships that are flexible and not full-time. I'd wager to say that the majority of Americans are employed in such an arrangement.

dragonwriter 7y ago
You would lose that wager badly; the vast majority of Americans that are in the workforce at all are employed full-time. See, e.g., https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm
- fucking_tragedy 7y ago
  Looks like I was wrong. Thanks for the reference and stats!
olivermarks 7y ago
'Flexible working' has been sold as 'the gig economy' but the reality is many people have to scrabble around doing multiple jobs to make ends meet and are playing musical chairs with short term jobs suddenly ending. Uber et al have put a glamorous sheen on this as they flaunt the wealth they have raised as middle men around mobile phone apps and enterprise scale back ends.

staticcaucasian 7y ago

I meet a lot who are students (eg, nursing). Driving for Uber is their only job, they'll do it as many hours as they can get, approaching FT. But they need the flexibility, they might do it in the short-term when they're between school terms or clinicals, and oftentimes they are free at the points where we need the most drivers on the road.

mymythisisthis 7y ago
This is more of a college funding problem.