Dive Brief:
- As Uber and Lyft began offering ride-hailing services in cities across the U.S. during the 2010s, economic activity and employment in certain jobs increased, according to a Carnegie Mellon University study published on July 24 in Nature Cities.
- The researchers found that regional gross domestic product per capita rose by an estimated 2.9% in the six years following the arrival of ride-hailing operators in each of the 167 metropolitan areas studied.
- The study also identified growth in “unstable employment” — another way of referring to gig workers — of about 3.7% in the working-age population, but not in total employment. “That could indicate “substitution of permanent jobs with seasonal or intermittent alternatives, turnover between stable jobs, or both,” the report says.
Dive Insight:
“The data back up some of the claims that Uber and Lyft have made that their presence in U.S. cities has had some positive economic effects,” CMU Professor of Engineering and Public Policy Jeremy Michalek, an author of the report, told Smart Cities Dive. The increase in intermittent jobs “might represent those jobs that people take between other jobs or to supplement other jobs,” he said.
Driving an Uber or Lyft could also lead to related app-based work, such as deliveries, errands or household tasks, the report says.
The data suggests that ride-hailing companies “helped encourage economic activity, probably beyond the drivers themselves, but probably also with all of the additional travel that they enabled,” Michalek said.
The study stopped at 2019, as the onset of the pandemic in 2020 disrupted transportation and work norms, Michalek said. He hopes to follow with a future study that would include the impact of driverless robotaxis.
