Seattle Delivery Pay Project.
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The Research

A better understanding of delivery pay.

Start with a clear question. Examine the evidence. Keep workers’ experiences at the center.

What the law changed.

Seattle’s App-Based Worker Minimum Payment Ordinance (SMC 8.37) took effect on January 13, 2024. For covered offers, the minimum is the greater of a time-and-mileage calculation or a minimum amount per offer.

This is an offer-based payment standard. It should not be read as a conventional hourly wage guaranteed for every hour a worker is logged into an app. Rates change over time; the official compensation schedule is the source for current amounts.

Read the official ordinance explanationEffective January 13, 2024Last reviewed October 29, 2026

The question we’re asking.

To what extent has Seattle’s App-Based Worker Minimum Payment Ordinance increased hourly earnings for app-based food-delivery workers since January 2024?

Count the hours. Define the earnings.

Time onlineLogged in & available

Per engaged hour
Earnings divided by time fulfilling offers.

Per online hour
Earnings divided by all time logged in and available.

Schematic only. Blocks are not to scale and show no measured durations or earnings. The earnings definition must also be held consistent when comparing hourly measures.
Engaged time
Time spent fulfilling an accepted offer, from acceptance to completion, subject to the ordinance’s coverage rules.
Online time
Time logged into an app and available for work, including engaged time and time between offers. Time on several apps can overlap.
Hourly earnings
Earnings divided by a stated measure of time. This survey asks about full online time, including tips and before work expenses.
Tips
Customer payments to a worker in addition to platform pay. Keep them separate when a source reports base payment only.
Order volume
The number of offers or deliveries in a specified period. A worker’s orders and citywide completed offers are different measures.
Worker utilization
The share of online time spent fulfilling offers. It helps explain why engaged-hour and online-hour measures differ.

Official coverage and engaged-time rulesEffective January 13, 2024

OLS time and pay definitionsApril 2026

Why the whole picture matters.

A higher payment for each delivery is one part of a larger economic picture. Customer demand, platform fees, tips, order frequency, the number of available workers, and waiting time may all affect earnings.

These are mechanisms to investigate, not conclusions about every Seattle delivery worker. The project’s question remains open to evidence of improvement, persistent problems, and differences between workers.

Economic mechanisms examined in An, Garin & KovakDecember 2025

What previous research shows.

The city’s platform records

A broad view of work after the law.

Seattle OLS examines records from five large platforms during the first 18 months after implementation and reports growth in completed offers over its year-over-year comparison.

Read with this in mind: All records are post-ordinance. This is not a causal before-and-after comparison.

Read the OLS research

Seattle Office of Labor StandardsApril 2026

An, Garin & Kovak

A closer look at incumbent workers.

The working paper compares Seattle workers with workers elsewhere in Washington. For highly attached incumbent drivers in its sample, fewer completed tasks offset higher task pay, leaving monthly earnings approximately unchanged.

Read with this in mind: A result for this studied sample cannot be generalized to every Seattle worker or to citywide order volume.

Read the working paper

Yuan An, Andrew Garin, and Brian K. KovakDecember 2025

Both sources report higher pay per task or engaged-time pay, but they do not estimate the same outcome for the same workers. OLS describes broad post-law platform records; the working paper compares incumbent workers across locations around implementation. Growth in overall offers can coexist with fewer tasks for a particular group of incumbent workers.

The NBER source is a working paper. The summaries here describe the cited publications, not a conclusion from this project.

Listening to workers directly.

The current Tally survey invites adults who currently deliver food through apps in Seattle. It asks about:

  • Usual weekly work hours and whether delivery is a primary income.
  • The platform used most and how often several delivery apps are open together.
  • Typical hourly earnings across full time online, including tips but before work costs, in ranges.
  • For workers active before January 2024, perceived changes in platform pay, tips, order availability, and overall hourly earnings.
  • Optional demographics, additional comments, and an optional earnings/time screenshot.

The questionnaire does not directly measure waiting time or utilization. Those topics belong to the broader review of published evidence. Its current hourly-earnings question uses ranges, not exact pay records.

Questionnaire reviewed October 29, 2026. Participation and privacy details.

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What this study can, and can’t, tell us.

Recruitment & participation

The intended approach is voluntary recruitment through outreach and sharing by relevant groups. Recruitment channels actually used will be documented with any published analysis. This is not a random sample of Seattle workers.

Selection & coverage

Workers choose whether to respond. People reached through particular locations or groups may differ from workers who are not reached. The survey targets current food-delivery workers and does not cover everyone working through an app.

Recall & measurement

Comparisons with before January 2024 rely on workers’ recollections. Earnings are self-reported, and overlapping app time complicates comparisons with platform records. Optional screenshots do not remove these limitations.

What the survey can establish

Responses can describe the participating workers’ experiences and suggest questions for further study. On their own, they cannot establish citywide causal effects or a representative average for all Seattle delivery workers.

Independent. Worker-centered. Open to the evidence.

Seattle Delivery Pay Project is an independent, student-led economics research initiative. It combines a review of existing evidence with an original worker survey to make the policy question understandable and support evidence-informed protections for delivery workers.

The commitment is to workers’ economic well-being and honest research. Recommendations, if developed, will follow the evidence and be presented separately from empirical findings.

Contact Seattle Delivery Pay Project

Go straight to the sources.

  1. App-Based Worker Minimum Payment Ordinance

    Seattle Office of Labor Standards. Effective January 13, 2024.

    SMC 8.37. Official explanation, compensation schedule, rules, and worker resources.

  2. An Analysis of the First Eighteen Months for App-Based Delivery Workers

    Seattle Office of Labor Standards. April 2026.

    Records from five large platforms, January 15, 2024 to June 29, 2025. All records are from after the ordinance took effect.

  3. Delivering Higher Pay? The Impacts of a Task-Level Pay Standard in the Gig Economy

    Yuan An, Andrew Garin, and Brian K. Kovak. December 2025.

    NBER Working Paper 34545. Cross-platform data and a comparison of incumbent Seattle delivery workers with workers elsewhere in Washington.

  4. App-Based Worker Ordinances

    Seattle Office of Labor Standards. Official resource; reviewed October 27, 2026.

    Official notices of rights and resources about covered app-based work.

  5. Worker rights resources in other languages

    Seattle Office of Labor Standards. Official resource; reviewed October 27, 2026.

    Find translated notices under App-Based Worker Protections. The project survey is currently in English.

Last reviewed October 29, 2026. Source publication dates and study periods are shown separately.

Data collection in progressAs of October 29, 2026

Project findings are not yet published.

The survey is open. An analysis and public summary will follow only when they are ready, with the evidence and limitations alongside them.

Read project updates