The disappearing breed of bike messengers

An interesting article in the current issue of the Economist (link here, but only for subscribers). The gist of the article is that improvements in technology (high-speed internet, digital pictures and audio, and PDF files) are decreasing the demand for bike messengers. Lorenz Gotte, a professor of economics at the University of Zurich (who used to be a bike messenger) estimates that bike-messenger revenues have decreased 5-10% a year since 2000. Salaries for the messengers have dropped as well--average hourly for bike messengers in San Francisco have decreased from $20 to $11 in that same timeframe.

Factor in that 2000 was a particularly giddy year out here before the internet/telecomm bubble burst, so it's use as a baseline might distort things some. But once again, it is less skilled workers who lose out to improvements in technology (although the messengers have a skill set I probably couldn't master very well).