A recent survey shows that most rideshare drivers prefer being independent contractors instead of employees, including a slight majority of full-time drivers.
The study was sponsored by Uber (we'll get to that later) and conducted by two political consulting firms, one that leans Democratic and one that leans Republican. Key quote from the report on the two firms and their work:
"Uber engaged two independent and well-respected research firms, Democratic-leaning Benenson Strategy Group and Republican-leaning GS Strategy Group to come together in a bi-partisan independent research project to explore the needs and concerns of app-based Drivers ..."
The study's key finding is that 64% of drivers report they prefer being independent contractors, with 24% saying they would prefer being a traditional W2 employee. The chart below (click to enlarge) is from the detailed study results report.
And as the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), a key reason most drivers prefer being an independent contractor is the flexibility it provides.
This, of course, is no surprise to anyone following this topic.
Almost every independent worker and/or rideshare driver study that has a representative sample we've seen shows that flexibility is a key reason people prefer being an independent worker. And we've been at this a long time and have seen hundreds of studies. Browse through our independent worker section to see many examples.
This study was sponsored by Uber, which means those opposed to Uber and drivers' classification as independent workers will attack it because of their involvement. We understand that having a corporate sponsor can lead to bias.
But in this case, the research firms released their full question set and answers. This means you can dig through the questions and data and look for bias. We did this and found that overall the study and survey questions were well constructed and methodologically sound.
However, we found several cases of leading questions where the phrasing likely influenced the survey takers' responses. The study's agree/disagree questions also used a 4 point scale, which tends to inflate both positive and negative responses compared to a 5 point scale.
But as you can see from the chart above, the key study question on whether or not drivers want to be employees or contractors used a 5 point scale.
We also found leading questions that both benefited Uber and went against them. So at least in our opinion, the leading question and scale issues balanced out.
Add in the fact that the study findings are consistent with almost every study done on this topic (including ours), and it's hard to argue the study is biased.
But a long time rule of PR is if you can't attack the message, attack the messenger. In the case of studies, this translates to if you can't attack the study methods or results, attack the researchers and/or the research backers.
So expect this study and its results to be attacked because Uber was involved.
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