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.
Starting this month, we are presenting reorganized, rebalanced, and re-indexed statistics with July 2022 as their base, for greater ease of use.
The labor market as a whole looked hotter in February, with increases in pay predominating and other indicators also showing signs of strength. In March we expect these factors to moderate slightly:
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.
Pros had an easier time finding full-time and part-time jobs in April, suggesting that the labor market may be heating up again. Finding app-based or temporary work outside the Instawork platform continued to be difficult:
For the fourth straight month, finding 41-50 hours of work per week got easier. Finding regular full-time hours was slightly harder. There was the smallest gap yet between the share of Pros working 30 hours or fewer and the share who wanted 30 hours or fewer. This has been driven by changes in the 21-30 hour a week segment. A bigger share of Pros used to want 21-30 hours than the share who actually worked those hours, but now the situation is reversed:
Overall, a larger share of Pros want to work 0-30 hours in April than in any of the previous four months, though the reference week (April 22) was in between the major religious holidays. It may have coincided with some school vacations.
In April we also asked Pros about the financial services they used. Though the vast majority of Pros had checking accounts, much fewer had savings accounts or credit cards. Fewer than 10% reported having auto loans and home mortgages:
Only 4% of Pros reported having a brokerage account. These data suggest that flexible workers are not unbanked but have worse access to other financial services than the majority of workers.
The gender balance on the Instawork platfrorm was steady in April, and the share of Pros identifying as Black/African-American rose for the second month in a row:
The share of Pros identifying as mixed-race fell to its lowest level in the past year.
A strong majority of businesses in hospitality raised pay in April, and that trend is expected to continue in May:
In-demand roles such as bartender and busser are expected to see higher hourly pay in May, as are servers:
Hourly pay for dishwashers is expected to rise in May for the second straight month while cooks' pay holds steady:
In one of the most volatile industry groups we track, the turnaround in pay signals for building and grounds cleaning is expected to continue its four-month streak in May, with most businesses raising hourly pay. This does not appear to be a seasonal trend, since the last similar streak occurred in the second half of 2022. After a few months of declines, custodial pay is set to rise for the third month in a row:
