More people are signing up to be Uber drivers now than ever

For a while now, Uber has been facing a driver shortage. See, during the pandemic, people weren’t really catching rides all over the place, so demand for drivers was down. But, as things have ramped back up, there has been a shortage of drivers, which means that wait times have been longer.

Now, though, almost 5 million people are either picking up passengers or getting the McDonald’s you ordered through Uber and UberEats – that’s 31% more than there were last year, and it’s the highest number of drivers that Uber has ever had, said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

But Uber drivers have long claimed that they’ve not been paid fairly for their work, and rising gas prices mean they’re making even less now than before. On top of that, Uber likes to classify drivers as independent contractors so they can essentially avoid giving certain benefits like minimum wage or holiday pay. (There’s been a bit of a legal fight on this around the world, though, with mixed results.)

Still, demand for the rideshare service is up; the company said there were nearly 1.9 billion trips during the April-June period, which was up nearly a quarter from last year and 12% more than in 2019 before the pandemic shut everything down.

So, whether or not the company treats its employees fairly, people need to get from point A to point B, and Uber helps them do that.