Maybe, but I think not. If there’s a recession, it becomes harder to get cash. If it is hard to get cash, you probably can’t afford to keep burning it in hope of building your competitive moat, especially if people are more conservative to the idea that the moat will never happen. So what does Meituan do about its annual $18B deficit? It can try to raise prices and lower wages (maybe you’re right and supply of labor increases), but that’s a fundamental change to its entire business and a huge gap to fill; plus the wages are already near the bottom. If it doesn’t click with consumers quickly... the business just dies- and for a lot of these services the enticement is just the low price right now. A lot of gig economy jobs are premised on bad businesses that only work now because there is a lot of capital to go around. It might be true that at a certain scale it would work, but that doesn’t mean they’re able to get there.
Can Uber and Lyft do better? Maybe. They can’t drop wages much lower either because these people need not only to eat but to pay off vehicle leases. And the more people driving for Uber, the less each person makes due to limited demand for rides (also likely reduced in a recession), so I think there will be a limited surge of new drivers.
It could be that Uber could just drop all of its scale except where profitable, but that throws billions of sunk cost down the drain too and throws a horrible signal to the market about its prospects for the future.
Tl;dr: I believe that companies with deeply red income statements will suffer the most when a recession hits, and it follows that disposable contract workers for these companies will be the most vulnerable.
Drivers are customers of lead generation software licensed by Uber and Lyft. When you think that way, you’ll realize why it doesn’t make sense to think that Uber or Lyft would have any reason or incentive to “fire” drivers during a recession.
You wouldn’t “dispose” of your customers in a recession.
Can Uber and Lyft do better? Maybe. They can’t drop wages much lower either because these people need not only to eat but to pay off vehicle leases. And the more people driving for Uber, the less each person makes due to limited demand for rides (also likely reduced in a recession), so I think there will be a limited surge of new drivers.
It could be that Uber could just drop all of its scale except where profitable, but that throws billions of sunk cost down the drain too and throws a horrible signal to the market about its prospects for the future.
Tl;dr: I believe that companies with deeply red income statements will suffer the most when a recession hits, and it follows that disposable contract workers for these companies will be the most vulnerable.