The Significance of Ride-Hailing Services: Beyond "Getting People to Destinations"
The significance of ride-hailing services has long transcended their original purpose as a "tool to transport people to destinations." Instead, they have gradually evolved into a super infrastructure that reorganizes "dispersed time, vehicles, and labor."
Wuyi Mountain is renowned for its specialty, Da Hong Pao (a premium oolong tea), and nearly every household here owns a tea plantation. April and May each year mark the peak tea-picking season, while the rest of the months are relatively slack for farming. This rhythm divides the life of Lin Jie, a tea farmer, into two distinct phases: picking tea during the busy season and driving for Didi during the off-season. The over 100,000 yuan she earns annually from driving serves as a financial buffer against the uncertainties of seasonal agricultural work.
Stories like Lin Jie’s are echoed among countless Didi drivers. They include laid-off workers who returned to county-level cities, urban middle-class individuals hit by unexpected hardships, and middle-aged women balancing work with family responsibilities... Grasping the steering wheel, they explore new possibilities in life.
According to a newly released report by the Research Team of China’s New Employment Forms Research Center—Employment Resilience in Urban Mobility: The Employment Landscape and Professional Performance of Ride-Hailing Drivers (2025) (hereafter referred to as "the Report")—as of 2024, the number of certified ride-hailing drivers nationwide had reached 7.483 million, a 159% increase compared to 2020.
Behind ride-hailing services emerging as an "employment reservoir" lies a profound shift: 13 years after they first entered public view in 2013, their significance has moved far beyond the initial goal of "transporting people to destinations." They have gradually developed into a super infrastructure that reorganizes "dispersed time, vehicles, and labor."
More Diverse Faces in the "Employment Reservoir"
Lin Jie is among Wuyi Mountain’s earliest Didi drivers. At 40, she has been driving for the platform for 8 years. Last year, her total earnings from driving reached 170,000 yuan—nearly equal to the annual revenue from her tea plantation.
Seasonal workers like Lin Jie are a key group that ride-hailing platforms aim to recruit to address labor misallocation. Their participation also reflects the growing size and diversity of the ride-hailing driver community.
For a long time, the ride-hailing industry has served as a crucial employment reservoir and buffer.
On one hand, it absorbs groups displaced by industrial upgrading. The Report shows that nearly 70% of surveyed drivers previously worked in traditional blue-collar jobs, such as manufacturing, construction, and catering.
On the other hand, new groups continue to join, with a noticeable trend toward middle-aged and female drivers.
The average age of ride-hailing drivers is approximately 40. Notably, in QuestMobile’s rankings this April, the Didi Driver app emerged as the most popular among men aged 31–45. Eighty percent of these drivers face cash flow pressures. Additionally, over 1.05 million female ride-hailing drivers earned income through the Didi platform last year, and 79% of them relied on this income as their sole source of earnings.
In a cross-sector comparison among six categories of "new blue-collar" occupations, ride-hailing drivers rank second with an average monthly income of 7,623 yuan. In first-tier cities, drivers who log on for 8 hours or more per day earn an average of 11,557 yuan monthly.
Amid industrial transformation and cyclical shifts, ride-hailing services—with their relatively low entry barriers, immediate cash flow, flexible working hours, and local operations—provide a buffer for people to quickly sustain household income while balancing caregiving responsibilities.
The Symbiotic Mechanism Enters a New Phase
However, as this workforce expands and consumer demands grow more complex, the symbiotic relationship between drivers and platforms has entered a new phase.
Ride-hailing platforms connect drivers and passengers, forming an interconnected ecosystem known in economics as a two-sided market. A key characteristic of such markets is the interdependence between users: once the number of users on a platform exceeds a critical threshold, a network effect emerges—more drivers mean faster ride-hailing for passengers, and more passengers mean more orders for drivers.
Unlike traditional enterprises, which only need to maintain relationships with their own customers, platforms must sustain positive interaction and communication with both sides of the market simultaneously.
Among the concerns of drivers, commission rates are a top issue: Is most of their income taken by the platform? There are even emotionally charged short videos online claiming, "Half the earnings from a single order are deducted as commissions."
Yet, a survey-based study by the School of Environment at Tsinghua University—An Empirical Study on the Impact of New Energy Vehicles on the Ride-Hailing Industry—revealed:
The average monthly commission rate for all surveyed Didi drivers was 15.3%, and 90% of drivers had a monthly commission rate below 20%.
71.8% of drivers overestimated their own commission rates in questionnaires.
Previously, Didi also publicly disclosed that the average commission rate across all its orders in 2024 was 14%.
The Tsinghua report analyzed that most drivers’ overestimation of commission rates may stem from:
Focusing on commissions for individual orders rather than monthly statements;
The "loss aversion" bias—remembering orders with high commissions more easily while ignoring those with low or negative commissions;
Insufficient understanding of the platform’s transparency measures or being influenced by misinformation.
The report suggested that platforms should optimize information display to reduce drivers’ difficulty in understanding commission calculations.
The Commission Dilemma Awaits a Solution
Liu Yuanju, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, argues that commissions essentially represent "drivers negotiating prices with platforms." As long as pricing is involved, complaints are inevitable. However, in general, as long as there is market competition and both parties have choices, pricing can be left to market forces.
Zhang Chenggang, an associate professor at the School of Labor Economics at Capital University of Economics and Business, pointed out a common misconception: platform commissions are not equivalent to profits.
He emphasized that commissions include two crucial types of expenditures:
1. "Redistribution" to Coordinate Transportation Capacity
The Report notes that Didi adopts a dynamic commission mechanism. The platform allocates a portion of commission revenue to establish a subsidy pool, which is used for:
Incentives for drivers during peak hours;
Subsidies for passengers and drivers in adverse weather (e.g., rain or snow) or in "cold zones" (areas with few ride requests);
Guaranteed subsidies for drivers during off-seasons or periods with no orders.
In other words, ride-hailing fares cannot be arbitrarily adjusted, but drivers’ willingness to accept different orders naturally varies. To ensure passengers can get rides in all locations and scenarios, it is crucial for platforms to use part of their revenue to flexibly subsidize drivers and balance supply and demand. For example, in rainy or snowy weather, even if fares increase slightly, drivers are often reluctant to go out—more subsidies (or even platform subsidies) are needed to slightly balance supply and demand.
2. Covering Operational and Security Costs
Zhang Chenggang mentioned that in his research samples, both negative and high commission rates existed. Negative commission rates are common during platform promotions, reverse subsidies for drivers/passengers, market entry by new players, or off-seasons.
In essence, the commission mechanism operates like a "reservoir": commissions are collected to form a pool of funds, which is then used to support drivers and passengers based on supply-demand dynamics and infrastructure needs. Its advantages lie in efficiently resolving supply-demand imbalances and ensuring sustainability, while its disadvantage is the high level of difficulty in understanding how it works.
Today, ride-hailing services like Didi are conveniently available even in small county-level cities across China. Behind this convenience is the platform’s role in delivering ecological and infrastructure value.
Take Dongxing City in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as an example. As a tourist city, its transportation market was once dominated by unlicensed "black cabs," which refused to use meters and had opaque pricing. In extreme cases, if passengers encountered accidents in black cabs, dispute resolution was inefficient and unclear. The "ride-hailing" experience alone severely damaged Dongxing’s urban image.
Yue Zhijun, who acts as a county-level Didi agent in Dongxing, told Xiaoba (a media outlet) that compared to the previous prevalence of black cabs, ride-hailing services now have strict compliance checks and mandatory insurance coverage. In most cases, government intervention is not required—drivers can report issues to the platform in real time, and a dedicated team will handle them.
Yue has worked as a county-level agent in Dongxing for three years, and his agency is the only offline ride-hailing management platform in the city. His main responsibilities include recruiting and managing local drivers, conducting regular monthly training, and communicating with drivers about their needs. The platform pays Yue a management fee for these services.
According to the Report, as of July 2025, Didi-authorized agents like Yue covered 22 provinces nationwide, totaling more than 270 agents. From August 2023 to March 2025, Didi invested a total of 3.3 billion yuan in county-level sinking markets, creating 590,000 jobs and increasing drivers’ income by 24%.
Platforms also draw from the "reservoir" to fund safety measures and driver protection. For instance, Didi’s fare advance service (launched in 2016) costs the platform hundreds of millions of yuan annually to cover fares evaded by passengers. Additionally, the platform has sustained long-term investment in driver welfare, care programs, and subsidies.
New Growth Drivers and Breaking the Deadlock
After clarifying internal relationships, the external challenges facing ride-hailing drivers and platforms are perhaps more severe—and these challenges also spill over internally, amplifying conflicts.
The Report shows that although the number of ride-hailing drivers increased by 159% compared to 2020, the average monthly number of orders only rose by approximately 38.3% during the same period. This means the growth rate of drivers has outpaced the actual demand for rides. Moreover, hundreds of ride-hailing platforms nationwide vary widely in qualification standards, and many engage in price competition to gain market share—further dragging down drivers’ incomes.
In the second quarter of this year:
In Suzhou, the average number of daily orders per ride-hailing vehicle was only 13.86, with an average daily revenue of 322.58 yuan. A staggering 14,000 vehicles (37% of the total) received fewer than 10 orders per day.
In Zhuhai, there were over 65,000 ride-hailing drivers, with an average of 12 daily orders per vehicle. After deducting all costs, drivers earned an average monthly income of approximately 4,000 yuan.
"It’s unlikely that the ride-hailing industry will return to the era when everyone could earn good money a few years ago," Zhang Chenggang admitted. As more people compete for a share of the "pie," each person’s slice inevitably shrinks.
Looking back, the heated debate over commissions essentially reflects a process of distributing interests among three parties—drivers, passengers, and platforms—and seeking a balance. As the intermediary in this distribution, platforms bear the brunt of dissatisfaction from both drivers and passengers: psychologically, it is easier to blame a "bad guy" than to grapple with complex systemic issues such as economic cycles, supply-demand dynamics, and consumer willingness.
However, to break this cycle, it is necessary to confront this complexity and rely on joint efforts from multiple stakeholders to find solutions and new growth drivers. In the future, platforms will likely rely more on refined operations.
For example:
Leading platforms can leverage economies of scale and algorithmic advantages to continuously improve dispatch efficiency, reduce empty driving rates, and help drivers cut costs.
Platforms can further segment scenarios and expand product lines. Didi, for instance, has partnered with local cultural and tourism authorities to boost consumer demand; established "Didi Stations" at airports, railway stations, and large commercial districts nationwide; and launched more segmented services such as 6-seater express rides, chartered cars, and economy rides. In particular, its "pet-friendly rides" have gained popularity among pet owners.
Data shows that through refined operations, Didi achieved double-digit growth in the number of orders over the past 10 quarters.
To strengthen trust between drivers and platforms, Didi launched a "transparent billing" feature in 2022. This feature enhances drivers’ understanding of their earnings by disclosing commission ranges, displaying detailed billing statements, explaining the weight of dispatch algorithm factors, and establishing an appeal channel for error correction—addressing drivers’ concerns about "hidden deductions" or "opaque dispatch."
Furthermore, in handling driver-passenger conflicts, driver rating evaluations, and incentive distribution, platforms are establishing clear standards and timelines to ensure fair treatment for drivers across different regions and groups. This helps foster a mindset among drivers that "good service leads to better income" and "more work yields more rewards."
Another visible trend is that platforms are continuously strengthening labor welfare and protection. Didi’s "Driver Protection Program 2.0" enhances support for platform drivers across four dimensions: income, rights, benefits, and participation.
Zhang Chenggang noted that compared to traditional blue-collar workplaces like factories, internet platforms are more willing to respond to social demands and fulfill their social responsibilities.
Conclusion
"In recent years, there hasn’t been much work to do, so more and more people are coming to drive for ride-hailing platforms. Even though the fare per order has decreased in the past two years, many people are still willing to do it."
Lin Jie’s words reflect the most authentic reality of countless ride-hailing drivers.
They are a group of people who see the steering wheel as a pillar of their lives—and their stories also depict an industry at a crossroads.
After all, "no company in the world has ever had more than 7 million partners," as Liu Yuanju put it.
Drivers continue to "step on the gas" in pursuit of a better life; meanwhile, ride-hailing platforms— as reconstructors of the mobility ecosystem—are embarking on a new journey. On one side lies stable employment, on the other lies boosted consumption, and numerous industry challenges remain unsolved.
What truly determines the future is how drivers, passengers, and platforms can find a new balance. Any change on one end of the "seesaw" will ripple through the entire ecological chain, and both the number of drivers and passengers’ willingness to spend are directly affected by macroeconomic cycles. This process of seeking balance is destined to be difficult and long.
Amid this arduous and prolonged journey, easing tensions, building trust, and exploring more opportunities for rational dialogue are not only responsibilities that platforms must shoulder, but also the only way for all stakeholders to join forces and break the deadlock.
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