 To be an Uber driver is to work when you want. Or so Uber likes to say. But recent research in DC shows something very different. "The price of flexibility in the gig economy is substantial," writes Katie Wells, a visiting scholar at George Washington University who is studying the working lives of Uber drivers. Last year Wells and her team conducted 40 in-person interviews and online surveys with Uber drivers in the metro Washington area. "Our project—which creates one of the first independent, qualitative datasets about the rideshare industry—found that the economic realities of precarious work are a far cry from the rosy promises of the gig economy," Wells wrote in a recent blog post. "In exchange for flexible schedules, Uber retains near total control over what really matters for drivers, namely the compensation and costs of work." Click here for a WAMU reporton Uber driver Kim Hall's (at right) experience.
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