Prop 22 and the rideshare pay floor: what the minimums actually deliver

California voters passed Proposition 22 in 2020, classifying app-based drivers as independent contractors and creating an earnings floor specific to engaged time. The California Supreme Court upheld the measure in July 2024, settling the legal challenge that had hung over the program for three years. Other states — Massachusetts via a 2024 ballot measure, Washington via the 2022 Independent Contractor Act, Minnesota via 2024 legislation, and New York City via Taxi and Limousine Commission rules — have since adopted variations of the same engaged-time floor model.

The headline number across all of these regimes is similar: a multiple of the local minimum wage paid for engaged time, plus a per-mile vehicle-cost reimbursement. The take-home reality is more complicated, and the gap between the floor and the actual paycheck is what drivers should focus on when comparing platforms or deciding how many hours to log on.

What the floor actually covers

Under California Prop 22, the minimum applies to “engaged time” — the period from accepting a trip through the drop-off. Time spent waiting between trips, driving to a pickup before the ride is confirmed, or sitting parked with the app on does not count toward the floor. Engaged time at most drivers’ utilization rates runs 60 to 75 percent of total on-app time in dense urban markets and lower in suburban or off-peak hours.

The Prop 22 formula pays 120 percent of the applicable local minimum wage for engaged time plus $0.30 per engaged mile as a vehicle-expense allowance. With California’s state minimum wage at $16.50 in 2026 and several cities above it — San Francisco, Los Angeles, and West Hollywood all sit higher — the engaged-hour floor lands between roughly $19.80 and $23 across major California markets.

That floor is calculated and trued up over two-week pay periods. If your engaged-time earnings net of tips fall short of the formula, the platform adds a “Prop 22 earnings guarantee” payment to close the gap. In practice, most full-time California drivers in dense metros do not receive guarantee top-ups every period because their effective engaged-time pay already exceeds the floor before any guarantee math runs.

New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Minnesota

New York City’s TLC rules predate Prop 22 and use a different formula: per-minute and per-mile rates calibrated to a utilization-adjusted earnings target. The current rates work out to roughly $1.16 per minute of trip time and a per-mile rate that varies by vehicle class, with the practical result that engaged-hour earnings in NYC tend to land in the high $20s to low $30s before tips. Massachusetts adopted a $32.50 per engaged-hour floor under its 2024 ballot deal, the highest dollar figure of any state.

Washington’s structure pays a per-minute and per-mile minimum that translates to roughly $1.17 per engaged mile and $0.34 per engaged minute in Seattle, with lower rates outside the city. Minnesota’s 2024 law sets per-mile and per-minute minimums of $1.28 and $0.31 statewide.

What the take-home actually looks like

Vehicle expenses are the line that separates the engaged-hour floor from the deposit in the bank. The IRS standard mileage rate for 2026 is $0.70 per business mile, which is the most defensible figure for fully loaded vehicle cost — fuel, depreciation, insurance, maintenance, and tires combined. For a driver running 1.6 miles of total on-app driving per engaged mile (a typical urban ratio when you include deadhead to pickups and inter-trip repositioning), the real per-engaged-mile vehicle cost lands closer to $1.10 to $1.15.

The $0.30 per-mile reimbursement built into Prop 22 covers a fraction of that. Independent analyses, including UC Berkeley Labor Center research published in 2023 and updated since, have put California rideshare driver net earnings after vehicle expenses in the range of $7 to $10 per hour when total on-app time is the denominator. Driver-side advocates put the figure lower; platform-side analyses put it higher and use engaged time as the denominator, which shifts the result by 30 to 50 percent.

What to do

Three practical moves matter more than the legal floor when you’re working the apps.

Track miles separately. Standard mileage rate deductions of $0.70 per business mile typically reduce federal taxable income enough to recoup most or all of the vehicle expense gap at tax time — but only if the miles are documented. App-based tracking from Stride, Hurdlr, or QuickBooks Self-Employed pulls trip data directly from the rideshare platforms and is sufficient for IRS substantiation.

Watch engaged-time ratio, not gross. A market that pays $26 per engaged hour with a 70 percent engaged-time ratio nets the same as a $19 per total-hour gross at any other utilization. Platforms publish engaged-time data inconsistently; trip-level export from your platform dashboard is more accurate than the in-app weekly summary.

Read the surge multipliers. Both Uber and Lyft tightened surge windows through 2024 and 2025, and the share of trips paid above the standard rate has fallen in most markets. If your weekly earnings are flat compared to two years ago at the same hours, the surge dilution is usually the cause — not your performance.