Average driver earnings are estimated to increase by almost $4,000 per year.

Drivers employed by Uber and Lyft in New York City or about to get a very big boost in their paychecks. NYC Mayor Eric Adams announced last week that they were going to increase the minimum driver pay rate for both Uber and Lyft, Marking the second such move since 2018. Now both Uber and Lyft will have to pay the drivers in the NYC area a minimum of $1.161 every mile and $0.529 per minute, which makes it roughly a 5.3 percent raise.

This is great news for the drivers who work in one of the world’s most expensive cities.Bhairavi Desai (executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance) said, “Uber, Lyft, and Via drivers are part of the largest private-sector workforces in the state. They are the anchor in many neighborhoods and are the majority of immigrants of color working to transition out of poverty, We all know the price of basic needs, like bread and milk, have gone up, and, for drivers, so have operating costs, like fuel and repairs. This 5.3 percent raise will help thousands of families find security and give many the chance to live under better conditions.”

This policy is going into effect on March 1st and is going to be impacting nearly 90,000 drivers in New York City, according to NY 1. This New York City driver price raise has the biggest victory in the global effort to improve the livelihoods of economic drivers. Uber, Lyft is also currently locked and busy in a battle in Massachusetts and California over their classification of drivers as “independent contractors”, a label that frees both companies from paying drivers minimum wage, overtime, and other benefits.