Sergio Sanjuro spends 30 hours a week driving passengers for Uber. And that's only one of his three jobs. (Yingzhi Yang/Neon Tommy)

The 25-year-old has been driving for UberX for five months. He also works two other jobs. He considers it lucky if he gets five hours of sleep a night.

“Bills and the price of everything is getting higher, so the only way to get ahead in life is you gotta hustle, hustle, hustle,” he says. His main goal is to make enough money within ten years and retire by 35. 

But at his current rate, that doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon. Sanjuro is a prime example of the work ethic needed in Los Angeles just to make ends meet. Although he is determined and ambitious, his three-job combo doesn’t leave him with much left over in his bank account. 

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Here’s what it looks like to juggle three jobs:

His weekly gross revenue from driving 30 hours for Uber is around $950. According to Uber’s 80/20 split policy, that means he pockets $760. 

Then he must take out $100 for gas, about $20 for car maintenance,  $10 for an iPhone rental fee (Uber requires each driver to rent a special iPhone) and $30 for driver's insurance. That leaves him with $600 before taxes, or about $20 per hour – not including car payments or vehicle repair. Still, he says, it beats what most jobs offer. “You can’t complain about that,” he says. “Now your car is working for you instead of you working for a car.” 

Besides Uber, he also works for promotional companies where he goes to promotional events, hands out brochures and delivers speeches about new products in front of crowds. The job is flexible, but not that steady. He wouldn’t disclose how much he makes there, but did explain that it often varies from month to month. 

On top of that, Sanjuro's primary job is working as an apartment building manager, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., three or four days a week. He helps rent out apartments and make sure everyone pays on time. While he wouldn’t disclose his exact salary, he says it’s about half of what he makes at Uber, which means he earns roughly $10 per hour as an apartment manager – just more than the current minimum wage of $9 an hour. 

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With an apartment in downtown Los Angeles that costs nearly $2,000 per month, and two sets of car payments (one for daily use and another for Uber driving) that add up to about $700, Sanjuro exceeds the roughly $2,400 a month he makes from Uber with those two expenses alone. 

With the additional cost of basic expenses adding up to $1,460 per month, according to a 2010 report from the California Budget Project, working all those hours allows Sanjuro to save only a few hundred dollars a month, hardly enough to start planning for his retirement. 

This story is part of a minimum wage series produced by USC Annenberg students.

Reach Contributor Yingzhi Yang here.