Back in 2024, Washington state was seeing “the second-highest price hikes for fast food menu items, which rose 6.1%” in early 2024. This was thanks in part to a Seattle ordinance that took effect at the beginning of that year, which raised the minimum wage for gig workers and delivery drivers. It backfired when people started deleting food/grocery delivery apps like DoorDash in protest of the insane add-on fees and price increases.
Here we are, some two years later, and unfortunately for those who pushed for this ordinance, not much has changed:
Things slowed down [a few months after the ordinance took effect]. Orders weren’t coming in; they still aren’t coming in like they used to. One worker told me she can be logged on for hours without receiving an order. Customers still want the convenience, but many balked at the fees that the apps tacked on after the new law. The companies say the fees are necessary.That pattern is consistent with a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research —wages were higher in the first few months and then dropped. The study also found that months later, drivers have more unpaid idle time, and drive longer distances between orders.
The National Bureau of Economic Research study (PDF) came out in December, and the information it laid out about the devastating effects the law had on the gig worker community in Seattle was staggering:
In the first few weeks after the new minimum wage was enacted, DoorDash reported a decline of 30,000 orders, while UberEats saw a 30 percent drop in order volume. Reports indicated that drivers were earning less than half of what they had prior to the ordinance’s passage.[…]While finding that per-task base pay doubled under the new wage, researchers also saw a corresponding decline in driver tips and a reduction in the number of tasks completed by each driver. As a result, within one month of the law’s implementation, the most active drivers had experienced no increase in monthly total earnings, according to the researchers. There was also evidence of increased wait times between tasks and more idle (i.e., non-earning) time spent by deliverers.The researchers conclude that in a labor market with free entry—which is the case with gig-based delivery work, given that new drivers can always sign up and join a platform—increases in base pay are fully offset by these declines in tips and order volume.
In July 2025, DoorDash revealed that it “operated at a loss in 2024” because of the law, and as a result, fees would be increasing again (bolded emphasis theirs):
Starting this month, consumers in Seattle will see increased service fees on all deliveries. To be clear, we are increasing some fees in an effort to continue delivering in the city–a market in which DoorDash operated at a loss in 2024. Despite clear data showing that Seattle’s delivery policies have led to lower earnings for Dashers, fewer orders for merchant partners, and a more expensive experience for consumers, Seattle’s leaders have once again forced through extreme regulations that will increase the costs of operating. Under these regulations, Seattle is now the most expensive market to facilitate delivery in the United States.
Seattle’s NPR news station, KUOW, revived the debate over the bill on Thursday during a segment about its impact, in which it was also noted that the law had negatively impacted restaurants:
I checked back with Uttam Mukherjee, co-owner of Spice Waala, that serves Indian street food on Capitol Hill, Columbia City, and Ballard. Mukherjee has expressed concerns early on. Those concerns he says have become real — he’s getting fewer orders coming through those apps because of the added fees that customers are now paying.“A meal might be $12 or $15 in our restaurant,” Uttam Mukherjee told me. “By the time a customer gets it through these apps, it becomes $35, $40 so I wouldn’t buy our own food for that price. Why should we expect customers to do that?”
The renewed discussion comes at an inconvenient time for some Democrats in the Washington state legislature, where a group of senators recently proposed SB 6346, a bill that would raise taxes on millionaires. This is how the bill is referred to on the website: “Establishing a tax on millionaires.”
Seattle-based tax attorney Joe Wallin noted on X that the lessons that should have been learned over the failed gig worker law should, in an ideal world, mean SB 6346 would be DOA:
A new National Bureau of Economic Research study confirmed what the numbers already showed: higher per-delivery pay was completely offset by fewer deliveries and lower tips. Active drivers saw zero net gain in monthly earnings.KUOW reported this week that two years in, the results are undeniable — Seattle is now the most expensive delivery market in the country. Denver, Portland, and San Francisco, cities without these laws, saw delivery revenue grow 20-40%. Seattle stagnated.The parallel to what’s happening with WA tax proposals is obvious. SB 6346 would impose a 9.9% income tax on high earners. The QSBS add-back bills would strip federal tax exclusions from founders. The argument is always “just a small tax on those who can afford it.” But capital moves. Founders move. Companies incorporate elsewhere.The DoorDash data gives us a controlled experiment: same company, same product, same time period, different policy environments. The city with the heaviest regulation saw the worst outcomes — including for the workers it tried to protect.
I think we can safely conclude at this point that the “progress” part of “progressive” actually refers to Democrat policies getting progressively worse over time.
– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –
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