For the decade between the end of the financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, the ride-hailing app Uber worked as a perfect illustration of wider trends. The company’s business model relied on the one-sided flexibility of the burgeoning gig economy. Its sky-high valuation depended on abundant Silicon Valley venture capital, willing to tolerate years of losses in exchange for growth and the promise of a dominant market position. It even sparked the neologism “Uberisation” to describe how its example helped transform industries, jobs and society.
Now its travails illustrate how those trends are shifting again. After almost a decade of being able to rely on cheap and relatively swift Ubers to get around, city dwellers must get used to a new experience. A shortfall of British drivers got so bad that the chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi met with unions to recruit new workers on a visit to London.
Driver shortages at Uber mirror those in the global economy. The pandemic prompted a whipsaw in demand for taxis as it did for other goods and services. During lockdowns few were taking trips, but with the reopening, and the urge to mingle again, came a sudden bounceback. Uber said that demand in the capital had risen by about a fifth in 2021 and even more in smaller UK cities. In the meantime, thousands of drivers had found other jobs; even while economies were locked down drivers were still needed for takeaway and online shopping deliveries.