Every day, the Instawork platform handles thousands of transactions involving businesses and hourly professionals, generating a huge amount of data on hourly pay as well as other aspects of the labor market. This report summarizes some of the major trends in demographics, roles, and worker constraints in regions across the United States.
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The data are also compiled into the Instawork Pay Signal Index (PSI) and indexed trends in hourly pay. Because businesses can book shifts in advance on the Instawork platform, the metrics include forward-looking data for the current month as well. Please refer to the appendix for explanations of the methods behind each metric.
A greater share of businesses lowered hourly pay on our platform in May than in any month since June 2022. Both drops followed surges in demand for in-person services and hence rising pay in the early part of the spring:
Our in-app surveys track Pros' labor market situations on a monthly basis. For details on methods and questionnaires, please see the Methodological Appendix below.
Here is the distribution of Pros by the jobs they worked up through the reference week (15 May 2023) this month:
With the end of spring vacations, most forms of work increased. Here is a similar breakdown for the types of jobs Pros wanted to work:
Slightly fewer Pros wanted full-time jobs, and the desire for other app/temp work continued to fall. But the share of Pros who actually worked full-time jobs was about 20% lower than the share of Pros who wanted full-time jobs. We expect this gap to widen if the economy enters a deeper downturn.
As one might expect given the uptick in full-time work, fewer Pros worked 0-10 hours last month. The biggest increase was in the 31-40 hours range:
Indeed, the share of Pros who wanted to work more than 40 hours also shrank slightly in May:
Very few Pros wanted to work 0-10 hours last month, and a steady three-quarters wanted to work 31 hours or more. We will see if this trend continues as we enter the school vacation period.
In May we also asked our Pros about their use of government assistance. Here are their responses:
The majority of Pros said they received no government assistance, but roughly a third said they used the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or other food aid. This is a substantial share of people who are clearly showing a desire to work and earn income but still require extra help to feed themselves and their families.
Almost one in five Pros said they used government health insurance. Since most of our Pros are below the eligibility age for Medicare, the majority of these Pros are probably receiving Medicaid. Families with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level about $34,000 for a family of three are typically eligible for Medicaid. To earn this amount over an average year, a worker would have to receive about $17 per hour.
Only a small share of Pros said they used government-provided Pre-K or day care. This is an issue of substantial interest for hourly workers, since child care is often crucial to their availability to work. Last month we learned that almost 60% of Pros had to care for children in addition to working. A few cities, like New York, have instituted free pre-K for four- or even three-year-olds, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
The share of men working shifts on the platform fell for the third straight month, and the share of white workers dropped for two months straight after a long increase. Because non-white and non-male workers have historically had a harder time finding full-time jobs in a soft labor market, these could be signs of further cooling in the economy:
Hourly pay dropped in light industrial work production, transportation, and logistics and looks set for a decline in services as well. Pay also continued its steep dip in building and grounds cleaning after a seasonal spike in March. The overall message is that service businesses again had trouble staffing up in the spring and are now at more normal levels, while businesses in goods-related industries may be moving sideways as they wait to see how orders evolve for the second half of the year:
Hourly pay was steady in most roles in May, albeit with some slight drops in hospitality roles. Pay for custodial and higher-skill warehouse positions may keep climbing in June, and pay for bussers may also recover after several months of decreases. General labor, which previously had steady pay since September 2022 as the supply of workers on our platform expanded, looks poised for a small rise in pay next month as well:
