May 12, 2020 -
Gizmodo
Guess How Much Uber and Lyft Would Owe California If Drivers Were Employees? Try $413 Million
If Lyft and Uber had classified their drivers as employees rather than independent contractors as the companies currently do (and would very much like to continue doing), what would they have hypothetically owed to California in unemployment insurance tax? According to an estimate from the UC Berkeley Labor Center, the two companies would have had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the state’s Unemployment Insurance Fund over a five-year period had their workers been employees.