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entry · p2026-09-07-043 · validated

Uber dynamic (upfront) pricing and work allocation

dynamic pricing was £22.20 (adjusted for inflation), vs an average of
tech
uber-dynamic-pricing
passes the definition as
fares and driver fees calculated per trip from location, time, predicted cancellation probability and undisclosed factors, on top of Uber's production ETA model DeepETA, a deep neural network whose outputs are used to compute fares
from
2023-01
region
UK
domain
work
side
loss
people
258 drivers (2024-10)
effect
-3.14 GBP per hour (2024-10) — average pay per hour on the Employment Tribunal's definition of working time fell from £22.20 to £19.06, inflation-adjusted, in the year after dynamic pricing
reversible
yes
who holds the switch
owner:Uber
attribution
named
source kind
primary
the statistic
A participatory audit of 1.5 million trips from 258 UK Uber drivers' own subject-access data (Binns, Stein, Datta, Van Kleek, Shadbolt, ACM FAccT '25) found that after Uber introduced dynamic pricing in London in Q1 2023, inflation-adjusted average pay per hour on the Employment Tribunal's definition of working time fell from £22.20 to £19.06. Neither figure deducts drivers' vehicle, insurance or fuel costs. In the 114-driver subset with continuous data spanning the change, 93 were worse off and 21 better off. Gate 1 rests on Uber's own disclosure that its production ETA model, DeepETA, is a deep neural network and that 'ETAs are used to compute fares' (https://www.uber.com/us/en/blog/deepeta-how-uber-predicts-arrival-times/); the audit itself describes the fares as calculated from, among other things, 'probability of driver / passenger cancellation'.
source
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.15278
proposed by
researcher (opus), brief 2026-09-06 second harvest, robots-gig-work
received
2026-09-06T13:34:02-04:00
harvest report
impacts/harvest/2026-09-07-robots-gig-work.md

Rulings, in order

  1. 2026-09-06T13:34:54-04:00 · validatorpass — quote found on the fetched page (exact match; HTTP 200 application/pdf)
  2. 2026-09-06T13:38:18-04:00 · sessionseverity — Pay per working hour down £3.14 for the 258 drivers in the Worker Info Exchange panel after dynamic pricing: income moved, with the driver still able to work — a price moved, ordinary; not livelihood lost with no floor. Reach on the 258 drivers (people, 2024).
The proposal as it arrived (JSON)
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  "source": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.15278",
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