“What’s happening is you’re seeing more people using some of these new ways of getting work to supplement their current jobs,” said Katharine Abraham, an economist at the University of Maryland and former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “It’s not a story about a fundamental transformation of the way that people’s jobs are organized.”

If the new California bill, which the governor is expected to sign into law, survives legal challenges and is emulated elsewhere, it will further undermine the case for gig-based freelance work — at least as it exists now — as a major share of the American labor pool. The bill requires many contract workers to be treated as regular employees, which would mean that they would be covered by minimum wage, overtime, unemployment insurance and other protections afforded traditional employees.

Platform-based freelance work essentially turns a person’s labor into a freely traded commodity. To Uber, the men and women who drive passengers in cars summoned with the company’s app do not count as its work force at all. Rather, they are its customers, according to the company’s securities filings. Just like the people ordering a ride or a food delivery, they are “end-users.”

The company views its role as making a market between people who want to give a ride and people who want to get somewhere. In other words, it sees itself more like a stock exchange or an auction website. The New York Stock Exchange doesn’t set the price of General Motors stock, nor eBay the price of Beanie Babies.

That, in turn, helps explain the stark divide between the views of Uber executives and those of the labor unions and California lawmakers who want Uber’s drivers to become employees, not free-floating independent contractors.

Research by economists employed by Uber has an almost radical implication: that the company couldn’t raise hourly compensation if it wanted to.

According to the study, which relied on internal company data, when Uber raised the rates drivers are paid, it created an initial surge in earnings. But over time, higher prices cause less demand from riders and more supply of drivers, so drivers end up spending more of their time twiddling their thumbs waiting for a gig, leaving hourly earnings little changed.