The reality though appears quite different. A study released last month from two economists, James A. Parrott and Michael Reich, indicated that in New York City, Uber’s largest domestic market, nearly two thirds of drivers who worked for ride-hailing services did so full time. They held no other jobs; approximately 80 percent bought cars for the purpose of making a living by driving them. Many were in debt from those acquisitions and making very little money.

Nine out of 10 drivers are immigrants and approximately 54 percent are responsible for providing more than half of their family incomes. Beyond that, the study found, the number of drivers for ride-hailing services grew 10 times faster than the rate of blue-collar employment, or employment in the city overall.

The gig, in effect, was the lifeline and the lifeline was insufficient. One of the bills passed by the Council is intended to ease the financial hardship of drivers for Uber, Lyft and other similar companies in a saturated market, where jobs for uneducated workers are hardly in abundance. A minimum wage of $17.22, after expenses, has been set, which would increase driver earnings by about 22.5 percent on average.

But this figure must be considered within the context of the broader economics of a city where just to live affordably (which is to say, spending a third of your income on rent) in any of its five cheapest neighborhoods — all of them in the Bronx, all of them with median listed rents of $1,500 to $1,600 a month — you need to earn between $54,000 and $58,000 a year. The minimum wage does not get you there.

What is astonishing about the current legislation is how tepid so much of it actually is, and how ferociously it was fought by the companies involved. The cornerstone of the Council’s work caps, for just one year, the number of cars that can operate in the city. Currently there are approximately 100,000 — an increase of 37,000 just since 2015. During the year the cap is effective, the city plans to study the economic and environmental impact further and it is allowing the various services to add wheelchair-accessible cars and vans in the meantime.