A minimum hourly wage law for NYC delivery workers has boosted their pay-but not everyone is reaping the benefits.

$19.56, the hard way

- Yasmin Gagne

William Medina has been delivering food for DoorDash and Uber Eats in Queens since 2019, when he moved to New York from Bogota, Colombia. He's risked his health picking up and delivering food to customers during the pandemic and pedaling through snow, hail, and thunderstorms. He deals with the daily hazards of navigating around New York City traffic, and his motorcycle has even been stolen.

Lately, though, times have been especially tough; he hasn't been able to send much to his family back home. For the past year, he's been struggling to keep up with his rent and pay for groceries—despite the fact that his hourly pay has never been higher. In December, his minimum hourly wage went up to $17.96, then it increased again to $19.56 in April. But new policies enacted by delivery apps in response to the higher pay keep him from working enough to generate sufficient income.

New York's City Council mandated the pay hike for the city's 65,000 delivery workers last June, marking a significant increase from the $5.39-an-hour average that had been the norm, according to the city's Department of Consumer and Workplace Protection (DCWP). The law faced stiff resistance from delivery companies, including Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub, which have all been struggling to be profitable. (Of the three, only Uber reported a profit in 2023.) They filed a suit after the law passed, delaying its implementation until December. (Uber and Grubhub did not respond to requests for comment; DoorDash answered questions via a spokesperson.)