SPONSORED CONTENT – App-based drivers for ride-hailing services are doing fairly well in Chicago, where their average per-hour earnings are twice that of the city's minimum wage, the Illinois Coalition for Independent Work finds.

According to the Illinois Coalition for Independent Work, app-based drivers make on average $36.63 an hour. Without tips, the average is $32.35 an hour. Data was taken by the coalition from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2021, for workers of DoorDash, Instacart, Lyft, and Uber. 

The minimum wage in Chicago is $15, which makes the average earnings of the drivers more than twice the minimum wage. The average hours an app-based driver works in Chicago are less than five hours per week per platform, using the app-based economy when and where it works best for them.

"Well, the main thing is to do between $3,000 to $4,000 a month," Othello King, a full-time Uber driver told Illinois Bizness Daily.

"As far as the traffic, as far as the business, as far as the conventions, as far as the activities, is coming back, but coming back slowly," King said. "So I just have to pace myself to get back where I want to be. As far as $3,000 to $4,000 a month."

A 2018 quarterly report about the gig economy done by PYMNTS of approximately 3,000 gig workers estimated that gig workers accounted for more than $1.4 trillion of total U.S. income. PYMNTS reports that the share of gig workers bringing in $100,000 or more annually rose from 30% to 40% from the third to fourth quarter in 2018.