The weekly pay data provided to workers in the app includes a breakdown of pay from Instacart (excluding tips) and time with an active job (which includes time travelling to the store, time shopping, and time on delivery). However, the weekly pay data provided by Instacart does not include an easily accessible tally of delivery miles and does not include dispatch miles at all.

Delivery miles & dispatch miles

The app design makes it somewhat tedious, but a worker can calculate their total delivery miles for the week by pulling up each separate job and adding the individual figures for delivery miles listed at the job level. Dispatch miles are not similarly accessible; while a worker must have GPS active to accept a job and so the app certainly could calculate dispatch miles, they do not currently do so. However, many workers do track these miles for their own personal accounting purposes, and there are in fact several “helper apps” which aid in this tracking.

56.5% of weekly pay reports included a total of delivery miles. We used that data to calculate that workers drove a median of 3.96 delivery miles per hour with an active job, then imputed that number of delivery miles per active hour to those weekly pay reports which lacked a figure for delivery miles. An alternative calculation based on mileage per order found a median 4.44 delivery miles per order; the results of this calculation were similar, but because the time data was more robust we felt the first calculation was more reliable.

Just under half of weekly pay reports (49.3%) included a number of dispatch miles. We used that data to calculate that workers drove a median of 5.21 dispatch miles per hour on an active job, then imputed that number of dispatch miles per active hour to those weekly pay reports which lacked a figure for dispatch miles. Again we checked our work by making an alternative calculation which found a median of 1.352 dispatch miles for each delivery mile. This alternative calculation produces quite similar results as the first figure, but again we assessed that the time data was a more robust basis for calculation.

Mileage reimbursement rate

Curiously, Instacart lists pay of 60¢ per mile for the miles from store to delivery, two cents more than the IRS rate. However, this amount is blended into the overall pay from Instacart, and in some jobs, the pay that’s supposedly for mileage actually makes up the largest part of what Instacart pays. (Additionally, they do not pay at all for the miles from dispatch to store, and do not claim to do so.) Further, since the mileage is not enumerated on top of other pay, it’s not really a separate reimbursement for expenses on top of pay.

Regardless of how the pay is listed, we break it down for analysis by taking the aggregate pay from Instacart (including what’s marked as being for mileage), and treating the expense of the full mileage as an expense reimbursement, with the balance as pay. While it’s not clear for what corporate accounting purpose they list that 60¢ figure vs. the 58¢ IRS rate, we have chosen to use the lower, official rate for the sake of the most honest and conservative comparison to conventional employment and to other gig jobs.

Time

Instacart reports total active time as well as “online time.” Active time is all time with an active job, from the moment of dispatch to arrival at the store through to delivery. Online time is all time available to work, including time waiting for a job. We only used active time as reported by Instacart.

Tips

After the recent controversy, Instacart clearly lists pay from the company separately from tips. We only count pay as part of the hourly equivalent pay calculation, as tips are intended to be on top of pay.