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Food delivery driver pay fell by up to 6% in 2022 compared to 2021, according to gig work management app Rodeo.
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Using data for drivers working across the four major delivery services – Just Eat, Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Stuart – a white-label delivery subcontractor used in some cities by Just Eat – it found that Uber paid the lowest at £4.31 per order, a fall of 1.3%.
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Just Eat, paid the highest at £6.13 per order although this was down from £6.53 in 2021, followed by Stuart at £5.32 (down from £5.45) and Deliveroo at £4.51 (down from £4.52).
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When taking average 2022 inflation of 8.9% into account, all four platforms saw real-terms pay fall dramatically. Just Eat pay dropped almost 14%, while Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Stuart all saw driver earnings per order down about 10%.
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Rodeo also used its data to track how many Deliveroo and Uber Eats workers are being paid less than 20p per minute while on orders – equal to £10 an hour if drivers spend 50 minutes of each hour working, as there is almost always some ‘dead time’ between orders.
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The proportion of Uber Eats orders paying under this threshold rose from less than 10% in 2021 to more than 16% in 2022. For Deliveroo, however, this fell from 13% to 12%.
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Alfie Pearce-Higgins, co-founder of Rodeo, said: “Millions of workers across the economy are seeing their pay eroded by the cost-of-living crisis and inflation, and delivery drivers are being hit the hardest.
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“Gig work offers flexibility and independence, which many workers welcome. But this only works if drivers can make informed, independent decisions. Sadly this is often not the case: these platforms use opaque algorithms, change pricing without communicating this to drivers and rarely make it easy for drivers to access and compare their own data.
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“Pay fell last year at all four of the major delivery apps even before inflation was taken into account. We believe that gig workers deserve a clear picture so they can choose who is offering the best work opportunities.”
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