COMP NEWS – Delivery workers in NYC have seen their total earnings jump more than 20% in the first quarter of 2024 following legislation that began enforcing a $17.96 wage for delivery workers.
New York City’s app-based delivery workers saw total weekly earnings increase to $28.3 million in Q1 2024, a 22% increase over Q4 2023, when the city began enforcing its new $17.96 app-based delivery wage, and a 42% increase compared to Q3 2023, the last full quarter before the implementation of the wage, the city said in a report on the wage’s impact.
The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection in New York City said that the number of app-based delivery workers logging on-call time declined by about 8%, though its figures do not take into account multi-app usage. The total number of workers carrying out delivery trips fell from 78,000 in Q1 2023 to 75,000 per week a year later.
Despite the industry’s claims that the wage had resulted in a sharp drop in deliveries the DCWP found that total weekly deliveries increased 8% year-over-year, to 2.77 million. A DoorDash spokesperson called the report “a misleading and blatantly biased assessment of the impact of the minimum pay rules,” and said the company was working on an alternate approach.
The changes to pay structure have made delivery workers’ jobs resemble traditional employment more than the gig work they began as.
Taken in aggregate, the increasing productivity and base pay of workers and the decision by apps like DoorDash to change their shift policies mean the rule has shifted New York City’s delivery work towards resembling regular, scheduled employment rather than gig work. In March, DoorDash announced changes to its worker availability policies and began pushing high-productivity, highly-rated workers to pre-scheduled shifts. Wood said the results have been uneven.
“We are treated like full-time employees when it’s convenient for the companies,” Wood said. “We are treated like gig workers when it’s convenient for us. Being able to sign up for a shift and sign on to the apps doesn’t guarantee that we’re going to get any jobs [and] doesn’t guarantee that we’re gonna get paid.”
On April 1, after the period covered by the DCWP’s report, the minimum pay rate rose to $19.56.
To read more about the base pay increases for NYC delivery workers, click here.
For more Comp News, see our recent posts.
Comp News is brought to you by CompXL, the flexible compensation software provider that enables mid- to large-size organizations to implement competitive pay structures such as vested stock options and variable incentive pay.
