The growth of the gig economy generates worker flexibility that, some have speculated, will favor women. We explore this by examining labor supply choices and earnings among more than a million rideshare drivers on Uber in the U.S. We document a roughly 7% gender earnings gap amongst drivers. We show that this gap can be entirely attributed to three factors: experience on the platform (learning-by-doing), preferences over where to work (driven largely by where drivers live and, to a lesser extent, safety), and preferences for driving speed. We do not find that men and women are differentially affected by a taste for specific hours, a return to within-week work intensity, or customer discrimination. Our results suggest that there is no reason to expect the gig economy to close gender differences. Even in the absence of discrimination and in flexible labor markets, women's relatively high opportunity cost of non-paid-work time and gender-based differences in preferences and constraints can sustain a gender pay gap.

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Media: Freakonomics, Marginal Revolution, Washington Post, Financial Times, The Verge, Quartz, Brookings, Telegraph, Fortune, Bloomberg, The Economist

One way for older workers to ease into retirement is to move to the gig economy where they can freely choose hours and intensity of work. We look at age/wage profiles of workers in the traditional labor market and of Uber drivers. While the move to the gig economy generates flexibility, it also moves pay closer to a spot market individuals earn (presumably) their marginal product. Earnings for workers in traditional jobs increase steeply with age, while Uber earnings are steadily declining after age forty. This highlights the tradoff between flexible work arrangments and earnings.