Lyft: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

Full company profile: Lyft, with the company's pandemic-support programs. This page covers its pandemic layoffs.

Category: mobility Pandemic-layoff role: Additional sourced company Last updated: 2026-09-25 Related article: The Pandemic Layoff Stress Test

Pandemic-role map

Reader shorthand: rideshare platform hit by the collapse in city travel.
What Lyft did for customers: connected riders with independent-contractor drivers and ran bike and scooter networks.
What broke in the pandemic: commuting, nightlife, airport and city trips fell under stay-at-home orders, and the company withdrew its 2020 guidance.
Relief role: Lyft had no documented PPP lender partnership. Its driver-facing relief was its own money for cleaning supplies, ride credits and quarantine pay, plus guidance on public benefits.
Data/tool role: a mobility-demand casualty whose drivers, as contractors, fell outside its payroll cuts.

Founders, Executives, and Investors

Lyft launched in 2012, out of the carpooling service Zimride, which Logan Green and John Zimmer had founded in 2007. Green was chief executive and Zimmer president through the pandemic. The company went public in 2019, pricing its shares at $72 and raising more than $2 billion, TechCrunch reported.

On March 27, 2023 Lyft said both founders would step down from their roles by mid-April, becoming chair and vice chair of the board. David Risher, a former Amazon executive who joined Amazon in 1997, took over as CEO. That day Lyft shares closed at $9.60.

Business Before the Pandemic

Lyft entered 2020 as a newly public company built around U.S. ride-hailing plus bikes and scooters. It had no delivery marketplace to fall back on when riders disappeared. TechCrunch noted that Lyft and Uber had both promised investors adjusted profitability heading into 2020.

What the Pandemic Changed

On April 20, 2020 Lyft committed $6.5 million to COVID-19 relief. Nearly $1.5 million went to cleaning supplies and protective equipment for drivers, including more than 35,000 sanitizing products already given out and hundreds of thousands of cloth face coverings on order. Another $1.5 million went to LyftUp ride credits for low-income seniors, domestic-violence victims and healthcare workers, rides on which drivers were paid as usual. Lyft also paid drivers who were diagnosed with COVID-19 or quarantined, waived fees in its Express Drive rental program and started Essential Deliveries. It said the co-founders had donated their salaries through June.

Nine days later came the staff cuts. On April 29, 2020 Lyft said it would lay off 982 employees, 17% of its workforce, and furlough 288 more. Pay was cut 30% for executive leadership, 20% for vice presidents and 10% for all other employees. Board members gave up 30% of their cash compensation for the second quarter. Lyft put the restructuring charge at $28 million to $36 million, booked in the second quarter. Its shares rose about 5% that day.

Business After the First Shock

Ride demand came back, but the founders' era ended. After Risher's appointment, the founders completed what Lyft called a two-year transition plan. They stepped down from the board on August 14, 2025, and converted their Class B shares to Class A the next day. That left all shareholders with equal voting rights and gave Green and Zimmer about 9.69 million Class A shares between them. Sean Aggarwal, a director since 2016 who had chaired the board from 2019 to 2023, returned as chair.

Where the Company Is Now

Public company, Nasdaq: LYFT. David Risher was chief executive as of the August 2025 board change.

Lyft Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status