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Time Machine

Taxi Drivers

Scrub through 156 years of this role's history, from when it first emerged, through every wave of technology that reshaped it, to the cited forecasts for where it's heading next.

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19001925195019752000now
2026
Known today as Taxi Drivers, including ride-hailing drivers (SOC 53-3054)
US Employment
204K
National Employment Matrix total for 2025 from the BLS 2025-35 projections cycle. It counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (86.5% of this occupation in 2025), so it is on a different basis from OEWS wage-and-salary estimates and is not a like-for-like point beside them.
Median Annual Wage
$42,100
≈ $41,021 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)
Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.
Beat · 2025

BLS counts 204,200 taxi-driver jobs in 2025, including ride-hailing drivers, of which 176,600 are self-employed. Only 27,600 are wage-and-salary jobs, which is why the OEWS points on this timeline (wage-and-salary only) are so much lower than the older Census counts.

Tools of the era

The tools that defined the work

Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Taximeter-equipped motor taxicab

    The fare meter replaced haggling with a posted price per mile, and the gasoline cab replaced the horse. On October 1, 1907, Harry N. Allen sent sixty-five red French Darracq cabs with fare meters down Fifth Avenue to a hack stand at the Plaza Hotel, charging by the mile; by 1908 his New York Taxicab Company had seven hundred cabs on the street. The driver's job changed from bargaining over a fare to running a metered vehicle owned by a fleet, and the fleet-and-driver tension over who pays for fuel and upkeep started almost at once.

    Effect on the work

    Horse cab work collapsed: the Census line for carriage and hack drivers fell from 35,376 in 1910 to 9,057 in 1920. The new fleet drivers organized early; in October 1908 five hundred of Allen's drivers struck over pay and deductions for gasoline, uniforms and upkeep.

  • Two-way radio dispatch

    Radio let a dispatcher send a cab to a caller instead of the driver cruising or waiting at a stand for a hail. Taxicab radio was licensed experimentally from about 1945, and the Federal Communications Commission's permanent rules for a Taxicab Radio Service took effect on July 1, 1949. By then the FCC counted about 3,000 taxicab radio systems with about 46,000 mobile units, and described the service as having grown at a phenomenal rate despite a shortage of frequencies.

  • In-cab card readers and electronic trip records (NYC TPEP)

    New York's Taxi Passenger Enhancement Program put credit card readers in every yellow cab in 2008 and replaced handwritten paper trip sheets with electronic records of pick-up and drop-off times, locations and itemized fares. Before TPEP no New York taxi took cards; by the 2014 Fact Book, 55 percent of trips were paid by card. For the driver it meant less cash handling and a complete electronic record of every trip.

  • Smartphone ride-hailing apps (Uber, Lyft)

    App platforms moved dispatch, pricing and payment onto the passenger's phone. Uber was founded in 2009 and reported 3.9 million Drivers worldwide on its platform in the last quarter of 2018 (Uber's term covers both ride drivers and delivery couriers). BLS describes the work this way: taxi drivers typically get requests through a central dispatcher, while ride-hailing drivers get requests through a smartphone app, usually drive their own cars, are paid a fare set in the app, and get little training beyond learning the app.

    Effect on the work

    The occupation became mostly self-employed. BLS Employment Projections puts 176,600 of the 204,200 taxi-driver jobs in 2025 (86.5 percent) in self-employment, and BLS attributes much of the projected growth to demand for ride-hailing drivers, who typically work as independent contractors.

  • Driverless robotaxis (Waymo)

    On October 8, 2020, Waymo opened its fully driverless ride service to Waymo One riders in the Phoenix area, saying that in the near term all of its rides there would be fully driverless. The service is confined to specific mapped areas, and no source the curator found measures any effect on national taxi-driver employment.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Published forecasts and AI exposure research

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey means within ±3%, which BLS calls little or no change.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+11.5%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 53-3054 (Taxi drivers): 204.2 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 227.7 thousand in 2035, a change of +23.5 thousand (+11.5%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (86.5% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
25%
of tasks
Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 53-3054.00 Taxi Drivers. Shown: human-rated β = 0.25, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.125 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.375; GPT-4-rated β 0.281. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.
Today, in this role

What's shifting in the work right now

The historical view above shows how this role has moved. This is the present-day detail: which AI tools are picking up which tasks, where the edge still is, and the natural directions this work can grow.

What's changing in your day

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereCollect fares or vouchers from passengers, and make change or issue receipts as necessary.

Collect fares or vouchers from passengers, and make change or issue receipts as necessary.[2]

Where your edge is

AI is sitting alongside you hereCommunicate with dispatchers by radio, telephone, or computer to exchange information and receive requests for passenger service.

Communicate with dispatchers by radio, telephone, or computer to exchange information and receive requests for passenger service.[2]

Where your edge is

AI is sitting alongside you hereComplete accident reports when necessary.

Complete accident reports when necessary.[2]

Where your edge is

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The data behind this timeline

On record since1880
Latest tracked employment204,200 (US, 2025)
Latest median pay$42,100 (2025)
Outlook+11.5% by 2035 (BLS Employment Projections 2025-35)
View all 11 cited data points
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)Source
191035,376n/aDecennial Census
19209,057n/aDecennial Census
1950214,000n/aDecennial Census
1960171,000n/aDecennial Census
1970158,000n/aDecennial Census
1980188,593n/aDecennial Census
202113,950$29,310BLS OEWS
202213,820$30,670BLS OEWS
202317,770$34,680BLS OEWS
202417,510$36,220BLS OEWS
2025204,200$42,100BLS Employment Projections, BLS OEWS
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