US passports issued annually

Uber and Lyft combined US rides and US passports issued annually have, between 2017 and 2022, risen together at a correlation of 0.915. Americans have, apparently, been acquiring both more rideshares and more international travel documents. The country was getting out more, in every sense. Some of us were also getting in.

Uber and Lyft combined rides climbed from 2.6 billion to over 5.5 billion in the period. US passports issued grew from around 21 million in 2017 to over 24 million by 2022, after a pandemic trough, driven by expanded international travel demand and the processing of expirations that accumulated during 2020-2021. Both trends are products of the same mobility rebound: Americans took more rides locally and more trips abroad as pandemic restrictions lifted. The passport and the Lyft are both products of a country that rediscovered how much it wanted to move.

Six years of two lines rising together can describe a country shaking off its immobility in two different ways. The rideshare and the passport are products of the same rebound. Both went up for the same reason.