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.
Several signs point to a weakening labor market, including stable or falling hourly pay, lower availability of full-time work, and increasing shares of women and racial/ethnic minorities working shifts on the Instawork platform. Hourly pay had been fairly stable in August and September across the platform, but October may bring a decline:
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 (18 September 2023) for the past month:
The shares of Pros with full-time, part-time, and other app-based or temporary work all fell in September, while the share completing Instawork shifts rose. Yet the share seeking full-time jobs rose, creating the biggest gap between actual and preferred full-time work since April:
So more Pros wanted to work full-time, but fewer of them actually had full-time positions, a sign of a weakening labor market. Pros continued to work more hours, however, with the share completing 30 hours or less falling to the lowest in our data to date:
By contrast, preferences for hours worked in September were fairly steady, albeit with slightly fewer Pros preferring not to work at all:
Overall, Pros were able to find the hours they wanted, but not always in the type of work they wanted. The preference for more hours could be driven by continuing concerns about prices and higher interest rates.
In September we also asked Pros when they most preferred to start a shift for in-person hourly work:
Weekdays were preferred by 80% of Pros, with 50% of the overall total preferring to start on weekday mornings. The question did not specify that the shifts had to be with Instawork. Nights were the least popular time to start shifts, but about 1 in 8 Pros still preferred them.
Trends that began early in the year continued in September, with a lower share of men and a higher share of Black/African-American workers completing shifts via the Instawork platform:
Workers from racial and ethnic minorities have historically been among the first to feel a weakening in the labor market, and their supply of labor on the Instawork platform may indicate a narrowing of other options.
As expected, hourly pay fell at the majority of businesses posting shifts for building and grounds cleaning in September after a strong gain in August. This trend is expected to continue in October, according to advance bookings on the Instawork platform. Businesses staffing hospitality roles were more likely to raise than lower pay in September, with hourly rates expected to stabilize in October. Pay for sales-related roles may fall next month, in line with the weakening demand for concession and cashier roles cited above:
Hourly pay rose in September for the majority of hospitality roles, and it is expected to continue climbing in October for several roles, including line cooks and prep cooks, in October. In the meantime, pay for general labor, custodial, and warehouse roles has stayed stable and may even decline slightly in October. Over the past year, increases in pay for hospitality roles have easily outpaced increases in pay for industrial roles, in line with the overall tightness of the labor market in each sector.
