There is a STRONG selection bias at play here.

Just to illustrate the point with fake numbers..

If 90% of drivers are doing the gig thing, maybe they’ll be driving Uber an hour a day on average. Then if 10% of drivers are doing 12 hours a day, most rides will be from the small minority of full time drivers.

It’s exactly the same as the experience most people have that flights tend to be overflowing with people, when the airlines claim many flights are totally empty.

I’m in Santa Barbara and I’ve had a number of drivers who are not full-time.

Students, retired people, and my favorite was a guy who would take 1-2 trips on the way home from his job to put into a travel savings so he and his family upgrade their vacations.

Here in Portugal the vast majority of the drivers seem to be doing it full time (having 3 phones at the same time to use several apps and all that). Many (most?) of them are Brasilian immigrants. Uber is dirt-cheap too here, and gas is expensive, so I don't understand how they even manage to turn a reasonable profit. Taxis are significantly more expensive (easily twice as much in my experience).

Every market is different though, I can definitely believe that the situation could be very different in California.

She and her husband have 5 computer repair shops (according to her bio here), so either all of them are doing bad or this is just a small fraction of their income. This is an extremely outlier that you should count for little or nothing in the definition of a policy.

Just to throw more anecdata in, I've never met a fulltime Uber driver. Most of my drivers are retired people who got bored and wanted some extra cash, like to chat, and wanted to get out of the house. Others have some disability that prevents them from working fulltime. Many are doing it for extra cash, especially around the holidays. Many only selectively drive when there are events that they know will make the rates spike.

I'm sure there are tons of fulltime Uber drivers, especially if you live in a city where cab drivers have made the switch. I live in the suburbs, and I've never met a fulltimer.

> people who got bored

One of the Uber drivers I had when visiting New York rolled up in a expensive German SUV (Mercedes IIRC) and was very well dressed.

Chatted and found out he was a lawyer by day, but drove Uber in the evenings when he was bored.

He didn't _need_ the $10-12 bucks we paid for the trip to the restaurant, but he did appreciate the chat.