It’s certainly different, but I think it should be in the comparison.
I drive 10 hours a week, not per day. But there’s a cost. To say “you make $10/hour” and an Uber driver makes $8.55 after expenses and taxes is not very useful because the Uber driver has more cash in pocket.
I think this is useful for an academic paper to compare apples to oranges. And the author directly compared this to minimum wage which seems like an amateur mistake for a researcher from MIT. Unless they have a policy angle they are promoting and are not a fair broker of info.
