Taxi Driver Online

UK Uber drivers’ earnings cut after changes to secretive algorithm

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... g-research

Many Uber drivers are earning “substantially less” an hour since the ride hailing app introduced a “dynamic pricing” algorithm in 2023 that coincided with the company taking a significantly higher share of fares, research has revealed.

The findings are in a study released on Thursday by academics at the University of Oxford. They analysed data provided by 258 UK Uber drivers responsible for 1.5m trips.

Having initially taken a fixed 20% cut of the UK fares charged, which subsequently rose to 25%, Uber introduced dynamic pricing in 2023, an algorithm that variably sets pay for drivers and fares for passengers. It is a later iteration of Uber’s “surge pricing” that increased fares during periods of peak demand.

Uber is now claiming a cut, or “take rate”, of 29% of a fare, rising to more than 50% in some cases, the researchers found.

Unions criticised the move when it was made in 2023, claiming there was no transparency and that the technology “could push down working conditions by targeting drivers based on their willingness and ability to accept lower fares”.

The Oxford research said: “Post-dynamic pricing, Uber’s passengers now pay higher prices, but the drivers are not better off.”

The paper, which was published in partnership with the non-profit gig worker organisation Worker Info Exchange (WIE), concluded: “Our findings suggest that post-dynamic pricing, many aspects of Uber drivers’ jobs have gotten worse. Average pay per hour on the app is stagnant, and is lower in real terms in the year following the introduction of dynamic pricing.

“Uber’s median take rate per driver has increased from 25% to 29%, and on some trips the take rate is over 50%. Furthermore, the higher take rates are concentrated among higher-fare trips, which explains how Uber can extract an additional 38% [income] from its driver’s labour on average … Many drivers are earning substantially less per hour.”

The findings follow a series of controversies to have engulfed the technology firm, including a 2021 UK supreme court ruling that Uber drivers are entitled to the minimum wage and paid holidays, as well as the 2022 release of the Uber files, a global investigation that revealed how the company duped police and regulators, and secretly lobbied governments across the world.

After the release of the Uber files, Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s senior vice-president of public affairs, said: “We have not and will not make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with our present values. Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.”

The Oxford research added that drivers’ average hourly pay was £29.46, using an Uber definition, or £15.98 if counting waiting time when they made themselves available to pick up passengers. Neither average takes into account costs including vehicle maintenance, insurance or fuel.

Uber said it did “not recognise the figures in this report”, adding: “Every driver is guaranteed to earn at least the national living wage.”

One interviewee in the study said it was only when passengers volunteered the fares they paid in conversations with drivers that “you discover they [Uber] are robbing us and the customer”.

An Uber spokesperson said: “Uber drivers in the UK took home over £1bn in earnings between January and March of this year, which is up on the year before. Drivers choose to drive with Uber because we offer total flexibility on when they work and provide full transparency over the trips they accept.

“All drivers receive a weekly summary of their earnings, which includes a clear breakdown of what Uber and the driver received from trips. We are proud that thousands of drivers continue to make the positive choice to work on Uber as passenger demand and trips continue to grow.”

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IDFIMH

This is the original piece on the WIE website, complete with a direct link to the longitudinal study

There's quite a bit more bold formatting and suchlike in the original that I haven't included below (fiddly enough as it is), so anyone who's a formatting zealot should visit the original


New Research Exposes Deepening Exploitation of Uber Drivers by Algorithmic Pay

https://www.workerinfoexchange.org/post ... ithmic-pay

A new independent study, published today by researchers from the University of Oxford in partnership with Worker Info Exchange, reveals that Uber’s introduction of dynamic pay has reduced driver pay, increased Uber’s commission, and made pay more unpredictable and unequal for its workforce. Uber’s so-called ‘dynamic’ pay system uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to set pay and assign work in real time — with no transparency for drivers and no ability to challenge automated decisions for pay and work allocation.

The report — Not Even Nice Work If You Can Get It; A Longitudinal Study of Uber’s Algorithmic Pay and Pricing — is based on an algorithmic audit of 1.5 million trips from 258 drivers who accessed their own trip data with Worker Info Exchange using GDPR subject access rights. This participatory audit, co-designed with Uber drivers themselves, is the first of its kind to leverage data subject access requests (DSARs) at scale to evaluate the impact of algorithmic pricing on gig workers’ livelihoods.

Key Findings

• Pay has declined since the introduction of dynamic pay

Gross hourly pay dropped from £22.20 to £19.06 before considering operating costs including vehicle rent, maintenance, fuel, commercial insurance, licensing, cleaning, parking, congestion charging and other costs. This leaves many drivers consistently earning below the national minimum wage despite the notional protection of the 2021 Supreme Court ruling against Uber.

• Pay inequality has widened, indicating active algorithmic wage discrimination

82% of longer serving Uber drivers are now earning less per hour than they did before dynamic pay and pricing was introduced. A small minority are earning more, but these gains are not shared evenly with benefits going to newer drivers and part time workers.

• Pay has become less predictable

Machine learning models have disrupted drivers’ ability to anticipate earnings based on time, location, and trip type. Whilst Uber often claims that drivers are free to work where and when they want, this report shows that the tacit knowledge of working drivers on the job has been degraded by Uber’s algorithms who seek to shape the market to their advantage only.

• Uber's commission (“take rate”) has increased and become less transparent

Prior to dynamic pricing, Uber’s commission was fixed at 25%. After the introduction of AI driven dynamic pay, Uber is taking much higher cuts — up to 50% or more on certain trips.

• Drivers’ working time is increasingly unpaid

Drivers now spend more time on standby waiting for dispatches than on paid trips. Standby hours have risen by over 1 hour per week on average since 2022. WIE’s previous Dying for Data report estimated the cost to UK workers for wage theft associated with unpaid waiting time was £1.9 billion in 2023.

A Shift Toward “Algorithmic Gamblification”
The study characterizes Uber’s pricing shift as a form of “algorithmic gamblification” — where drivers are pushed into a real-time gamble for fair pay, with no transparency, no bargaining power, and no control over how prices are calculated. As one driver put it: “They [Uber] are robbing us and the customer.”

How much have UK Uber drivers lost out in pay?
Building on the University of Oxford's analysis, Worker Info Exchange has conducted its own assessment to estimate total losses for Uber drivers in the UK. According to Uber’s financial disclosures, the company’s global take rate — the percentage of fare revenue retained by Uber — increased from 20% in Q4 2021 to 30% in Q4 2024, following the introduction of dynamic pay. This 10-percentage point increase represents a $8.7 billion global loss of income for Uber drivers in the 12 months to March 31, 2025. Given that Uber UK accounts for approximately 18% of global revenue, Worker Info Exchange estimates that UK Uber drivers lost out on $1.6 billion in pay over the same period — a direct result of Uber increasing its share of the fare.

Worker Info Exchange Urges Urgent Policy Action:

• Mandate transparency on pay and pricing algorithms for both drivers and passengers.

• Ban dynamic pay and end unfair automated decision making with effective enforcement of the UK GDPR.

• A single status of employment to end bogus self employment and active enforcement of the 2021 Uber Supreme Court ruling to which Uber has never fully complied with.

• An end to wage theft with pay for all working time — from log on to log off — as ruled by the Employment Tribunal against Uber.

• Cap private hire licensing of drivers to improve driver utilisation, ensure fair pay and reduce congestion.

• Give unions collective data access rights and provide anonymised journey data to local authorities for open publication — as already happens in New York, Chicago, and California.

James Farrar, Director of Worker Info Exchange, said:

“Uber UK managers must now come clean and explain to their workers how their pay is set — and how much of each fare the company is taking. If Uber is allowed to continue getting away with the algorithmic trickery of its so-called ‘dynamic pay’ model, we should not be surprised when hyper-variability and AI-induced precarity in pay become the norm across the entire labour market.”

Reuben Binns, Associate Professor of Human Centred Computing, University of Oxford said:

"Uber's dynamic pricing and pay algorithms are squeezing drivers while fleecing customers. The more customers pay, the higher Uber's cut, and the less drivers keep, meaning that drivers are worse off even as they generate more profits for Uber."

Who'd have thunk it??

So my new word of the day indicates that I've been undertaking a longitudinal study of the Dundee and St Andrews trades for almost 27 years now

Anyway, huge potential rabbit hole with all that stuff, but interesting that the authors of the study are all members of the Department of Computer Science at Oxford, while I was expecting something relating more to economics generally, or labour markets in particular

But, academically, their interest seems to be mainly human-computer interaction and stuff like that, and thus their interest in Uber and apps etc.

One paper I came across at random is titled:

"You are you and the app. There’s nobody else.": Building Worker−Designed Data Institutions within Platform Hegemony

No, me neither

But, of course, although there are unique features to apps and Uber, the whole thing gives the usual impression of thinking Uber is something totally new, as opposed to 'taxi' driving via an app.

But that's because they're computer scientists. So it's not so much being unable to see the wood for the trees, as not being able to see the taxi trade for the, er, computer science

You mean a 'taxi' office with an app?


You mean a 'taxi' office with an app?

they are an american corporation staffed by American educated executives why expect anything else as they say in the US greed is good

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Given how much Uber cherish spin and lies this study will miff them off big time.

Oh dear what a shame.

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IDFIMH

Even the Yanks are working it out now.

Second study finds Uber used opaque algorithm to dramatically boost profits

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... st-profits

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IDFIMH

here's a local example

Stamford to Serpentine green (15 miles) customer charged £35.00 on app driver got paid £13.40

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

All of which reminds me, I was having a look around the Workers Info Exchange website when the study was published, and came across this in their manifesto. Which, like the whole ride-hailing/sharing economy and all that kind of stuff, just sounds like a new way of describing something we all know by much simpler terms...

And the highlighted part is just nonsense, surely, at least as regards 'human operated taxi services'

And I just can't believe the quoted DfT figures either


https://www.workerinfoexchange.org/manifesto

But if you're in any doubt about what all that means, then this from the WIE in another article makes it abundantly clear


https://www.workerinfoexchange.org/post ... ourney-dat