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Uber's ride bookings fell 44 percent in 2020 while its delivery bookings more than doubled. The company took no PPP loan and booked $106 million of its own pandemic spending on drivers, protective equipment and free rides. Its drivers, who were not on the payroll, got their federal help elsewhere: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, and PPP loans that Uber helped them apply for through Kabbage. Uber was also the largest funder of California's Proposition 22, which kept those drivers contractors.

  • Type: Ride-hailing, delivery (Uber Eats), and freight platform. Public company, NYSE: UBER.
  • Legal entity: Uber Technologies, Inc. (Delaware C-corp, headquartered in San Francisco).
  • Founded: 2009, San Francisco, by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick.
  • CEO: Dara Khosrowshahi (since 2017); led the company through the pandemic.

In the archive

Before the pandemic (2009–early 2020)

Uber entered 2020 as a newly public company running ride-hailing, Uber Eats and Uber Freight (company filings). Its drivers and couriers were independent contractors, and it was contesting California's AB5 classification law; contractors sat outside the employer obligations (sick leave, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation) that an employee workforce would have triggered. With Postmates and two drivers, Uber was suing to overturn AB5, calling it "irrational and unconstitutional."

"A month ago, Uber was connecting 16 million trips a day," Khosrowshahi wrote on March 31, 2020. "Now, we're urging our riders to stay home if they can." By June, Fortune reported, the virus had cut drivers' rides by as much as 80 percent.

What the pandemic did to the business

Uber's annual report for 2020 counts the damage. Gross bookings fell $7.1 billion, or 11 percent. Mobility bookings, the rides business, fell 44 percent on a constant-currency basis for the year and 73 percent in the second quarter. Delivery bookings grew 110 percent, helped by "a 32% increase in basket sizes globally driven by stay-at-home order demand related to COVID-19." Revenue fell 14 percent, from $13.0 billion to $11.1 billion. Uber took a $193 million impairment on its New Mobility unit, "primarily related to COVID-19 impacts on certain markets," and exited its JUMP business.

Uber grew its delivery business by acquisition. It agreed on July 6, 2020 to buy Postmates in an all-stock deal worth about $2.65 billion and closed it on December 1, 2020 (SEC 8-K, cited in the Postmates profile). It ended 2020 with $6.8 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

Relief: none for Uber, some for its drivers

SBA's PPP data list no loan to Uber Technologies as a business with employees. They do list 51 loans, totaling $451,777 and approved between April 27, 2020 and May 22, 2021, to borrowers whose names include "Uber" and who gave 1455 Market Street in San Francisco, then Uber's headquarters, as their address. Every one reported a single job and a sole-proprietor, independent-contractor or self-employed business type. Forty-five were forgiven, for $400,113. The data do not say who the borrowers were.

On March 23, 2020, Khosrowshahi wrote to President Trump asking that the stimulus then being drafted "include protections and benefits for independent workers, not just employees." "My goal in writing to you is not to ask for a bailout for Uber," he wrote, "but rather for support for the independent workers on our platform." He also asked for a "third way" in labor law.

Congress supplied the benefits. The CARES Act's Pandemic Unemployment Assistance covered contractors, and California chose to route Uber and Lyft drivers to that federal program instead of its own unemployment fund, which the companies had not paid into for drivers. KQED's April 2020 headline: "Uber and Lyft Aren't Paying for Drivers' Unemployment: You Are."

On June 16, 2020, Uber and Kabbage launched a streamlined PPP application for "drivers and delivery people using Uber." It clarified eligibility and, with the driver's permission, pre-filled Uber earnings data so a sole proprietor could apply quickly. Kabbage's release put its PPP lending at more than 130,000 SBA-approved loans and $3.8 billion at that point; Fortune, the same day, reported more than 143,000 loans totaling more than $4.15 billion. The funnel came a year before the sole-proprietor PPP pipelines that Womply and Blueacorn ran in 2021. Kabbage's PPP unit became K Servicing (see its profile).

What Uber paid for itself

In mid-March 2020 Uber offered up to 14 days of financial assistance to any driver or courier diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed under an individual quarantine order by a public health authority. The original terms paid average daily earnings over the prior six months, with a $50 minimum, and required medical or public-health documentation; the account was placed on hold during the assistance period. CNBC reported on a driver with a positive test who was initially denied, and on rideshare commentators calling the policy "the bare minimum."

On April 9, 2020, Uber revised the policy, saying the original version "supported too few drivers" and that "the process to get funds has been complicated and confusing." The revision broadened eligibility to drivers told to quarantine because of high-risk preexisting conditions, but replaced uncapped earnings-based pay with per-city maximums (Uber's own examples: Los Angeles $459, Columbus $244, Rio Grande Valley $136). Applications closed August 27, 2021.

Uber said it committed $50 million for masks, disinfectant and sanitizer for drivers, and stood up an in-app COVID-19 Resources Hub whose help included applying for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. On March 16, 2020 Uber Eats waived its delivery fee on orders from more than 100,000 independent restaurants in the U.S. and Canada, offered restaurants opt-in daily payouts and cut onboarding for new restaurants to under 24 hours. Uber also pledged 300,000 free meals to first responders and healthcare workers. On March 31 Khosrowshahi pledged 10 million free rides and food deliveries to healthcare workers, seniors and people in need. On April 16 Uber partnered with Feeding America and World Central Kitchen to deliver meals, and launched 1-833-USE-UBER, a phone line for seniors without smartphones to order Uber Eats. Its May 13 global-response page added 200,000 free NHS rides in London and free rides and meals for domestic-violence survivors.

The annual report puts a price on the programs. Uber's "COVID-19 response initiatives" cost $106 million in 2020: payments to drivers personally affected by COVID-19, protective equipment for drivers and reimbursement for what they bought, free rides and deliveries to healthcare workers, seniors and others, and charitable donations. Uber left the $106 million out of adjusted EBITDA, the profit measure it reports to investors, as an item "not indicative of our ongoing operating performance."

Proposition 22 and the classification cases

On May 5, 2020, California's Attorney General and the city attorneys of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego sued Uber and Lyft in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging that drivers were misclassified. The court enjoined both companies from classifying drivers as contractors; the Court of Appeal affirmed on October 22, 2020. Massachusetts's Attorney General filed a similar complaint in July 2020.

Uber was the largest funder of California's Proposition 22, which exempted app-based drivers from employee status and passed on November 3, 2020; Ballotpedia lists Uber's contributions at $59.5 million. The Intercept reported that Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and other gig companies together spent more than $200 million on it. Proposition 22 took effect on December 16, 2020, with a guaranteed minimum earnings floor for drivers, injury insurance and health-care subsidies, which Uber said it did not expect to have a material impact. The Attorney General's injunction was dissolved by stipulation on April 16, 2021; the suit continued over the period before Proposition 22. Uber's annual report for 2025 says the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 22's constitutionality, and that the Massachusetts case was resolved in June 2024 "with the understanding that drivers would continue to be classified as independent contractors." Under that settlement Uber agreed to pay Massachusetts $148 million and Lyft $27 million, most of it restitution to drivers, WBUR reported.

The Intercept also reported that Uber alone spent $540,000 lobbying Congress in the first quarter of 2021, including on the PRO Act. In November 2020 Uber formed the App-Based Work Alliance with Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates.

Unemployment insurance stayed in dispute with the states. California's Employment Development Department audited whether drivers should be treated as employees for the fourth quarter of 2017 through the fourth quarter of 2020, and separately assessed Postmates for 2018 to 2020. Uber agreed a settlement of the remaining California audits in September 2025 and paid it in January 2026; the report does not give the amount. New Jersey's Department of Labor issued a preliminary assessment for 2019 through mid-2023 in December 2024, which Uber is disputing.

Layoffs

Uber cut about 3,700 jobs in customer support and recruiting on May 6, 2020, 14 percent of its staff and the largest tech layoff Layoffs.fyi had counted since the pandemic began, and announced about 3,000 more on May 18. Restructuring cost $362 million in 2020, $248 million of it in cash, primarily severance. How Uber handled layoffs →

After the pandemic (2021–present)

Revenue fell from $13.0 billion in 2019 to $11.1 billion in 2020 and reached $52.0 billion in 2025. Uber posted an operating loss every year from 2018 through 2022, including $8.6 billion in 2019 and $4.9 billion in 2020, and an operating profit of $1.1 billion in 2023; operating income was $5.6 billion in 2025. Net income of $9.9 billion in 2024 and $10.1 billion in 2025 included income-tax benefits of $5.8 billion and $4.3 billion. In 2025 the platform carried 13.6 billion trips and $193.5 billion of gross bookings. Uber had about 34,000 employees at the end of 2025, about 20,300 of them outside the United States, against about 26,900 at the end of 2019 (Forms 10-K for 2019 and 2025). Drivers and couriers are not in those counts.

Current posture (as of mid-2026)

Public company, NYSE: UBER, with Dara Khosrowshahi as CEO; the Postmates brand continues inside Uber. We found no PPP loan to Uber as an employer and no PPP-fraud finding against the company.

  • Dara Khosrowshahi — CEO; the letter to Trump, the Postmates deal, the classification fight
  • Postmates — acquired by Uber, closed December 2020
  • Lyft — the ride-hailing peer with a parallel driver-assistance record
  • Kabbage / K Servicing — built the Uber-driver PPP funnel
  • App-Based Work Alliance — advocacy group Uber formed with Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and Postmates in November 2020.
  • Bastian Lehmann — co-founder and CEO of Postmates, which Uber acquired in 2020.

Sources

Primary documents in this archive

External references

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