The reality of gig driving in Denver

I drove for Lyft more than ever the last couple years in between jobs, or sometimes when I was full-time employed but couldn’t make ends meet, which is normal in my case. I am a single mom — making ends meet often means adding a gig to your income.

I thought driving full time for a rideshare app might be the safety net I needed. It wasn’t about having what I needed, it was about having an option to make cash. Any time I turned to driving it was to supplement or be my full-time income because I needed immediate cash.

The advertisements on social media about the flexible hours, potential upside, and being your own boss are not close to the reality of the circumstances of your everyday rideshare driver. What I experienced was reflected in a later report that came out on driver and gig experience by Jobs with Justice. It narrated exactly what I had experienced — often driving around the city looking for a ride to just pay for the gas without rides that help pay for that gas.

Some days I drove for 14 hours straight without making minimum wage when I had to turn around and pay for car maintenance. As the report indicated, our reported mileage, income, hours and unpaid time add up, and across all three gig platforms it studies — Uber, Lyft and Doordash — it found that drivers were making around $5.49 an hour.

Read that again. Drivers are making on average $5.49 an hour.

This means that Uber and Lyft have created a second class of workers — unable to reach benefits, or any rights that workers do in other sectors, since rideshare companies call themselves “non-employers,” evading any responsibility over the people who work for them. There is no employer liability. Drivers are on their own, and making less than minimum wage. Minimum wage in Denver in 2025 is $18.81 per hour for non-tipped employees and $15.79 per hour for tipped employees. These corporate giants are making people work for one-third of the minimum wage in metro Denver. Seems like a crime, right?

Imagine chasing cash with your car when you have to worry about the constant fear that one complaint or algorithm change would end your income immediately.

I drove across Interstate 25 and even Lyfted across Summit County multiple times, during three winters, which left a tremendous cost on my car. When I had to replace my brakes, I was out of that income again.

One Friday evening I remember parking near Union Station in downtown Denver, waiting for a ping by my old office after being laid off. The first two hours of driving were filled with short trips: a half-mile drop, a quick run across the block, a drunk man who verbally accosted me, someone who puked in my back seat, each ride earning me around $6 or $7. Then a longer ride popped up, about 16 miles across town I’d get $13 for. Add in the mileage, gas and wear on my car, and that longer ride was hardly worth the time. By the end of six hours on the road, I had about $60 before expenses, well under minimum wage before subtracting gas, insurance, maintenance, and self-employment taxes.

Many days the promise of “flexibility” felt more like economic fragility.

National industry data shows that gig drivers’ earnings have declined in recent years, even as hours on the road have increased. In one analysis, drivers saw a 3% drop in average weekly earnings while logging more hours, a lose-lose equation. Federal regulators have even taken action against gig companies for advertising exaggerated earnings potential, underscoring what most drivers already know: The advertised $25 or $30 an hour is far from what most of us see after expenses.

Do the math. Suppose you gross $25 an hour on the app during a “busy” period. Subtract platform fees, gas, insurance, car depreciation and taxes. Then factor in the unpaid hours spent waiting for rides. That $25 shrinks fast, often into single digits an hour.

Denver is not unique. This is the reality of gig work across the state and the country. But here in Colorado, rideshare platforms are essential parts of our transportation system. Students, seniors and late-night workers depend on them. That dependence makes it easy to forget that behind every ride is a driver absorbing nearly all the risk with no protections from any employer, because Uber and Lyft are not considered employers and thus are unable to offer worker protections that those workers would otherwise have if they were not considered independent contractors.

Colorado has the opportunity to lead for our gig workers who are marginalized by these corporate giants and their anti-worker policies. Transparent earnings, caps on how much companies can take from a driver for a ride, portable benefits, better deactivation rules and support for cooperative models are all areas we know drivers are concerned with.

I eventually left driving full time. The physical and emotional toll was too high and I had to replace my brakes — a $700 job that can’t be done with my income as a driver. I am one of 248,378 gig workers who have been broadly defined as independent contractors and make up 12% of Colorado’s workforce. This workforce (potentially over 1 in 10 Colordans) does not have access to basic worker rights, let alone minimum wage.

It’s time that changes.