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 slight majority of businesses raised pay in June, but advance bookings suggest this may reverse in July:
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 (19 June 2023) this month:
Work in full-time jobs came down in June, but the share of Pros who wanted a full-time job was steady:
More Pros wanted part-time jobs, but fewer actually had them. These could be further signs of a cooling labor market.
The share off Pros working 0-10 hours increased in June, but it was offset by the share of Pros working 21-30 hours:
A slightly larger share of Pros did say they wanted to work 0-10 hours in June. But looking at the entire sample, the preference for hours increased, with the highest share of Pros preferring 31+ hours of work in the past four months:
In June we also asked our Pros how they thought the labor market would change in July. Here are their responses:
The Pros who thought finding a job would be harder in July easily outnumbered those who thought it would be easier. Meanwhile, almost a third of Pros were too uncertain about the future to respond. The fact that only a third of Pros expressed any confidence about the labor market suggests more cooling may be on the way.
Because flexible work is one of several options that workers might have in the labor market, increases in flexible work may mean decreases in other areas. The following statistics measure differences in shift work booked on the Instawork platform (measured in hours), month over month:
Flexible work grew the least in California and Texas in June. Many of the roles with lower volumes in May rebounded in June. Housekeeping also grew as we expanded our offerings for this role across the country.
Technical note: To control for the growth of the Instawork platform, only business locations that have participated for at least two months before the start of the comparison period are included. Changes in hours are included only for roles for which businesses booked shifts during both months.
The share of men working shifts on the platform fell for the fourth straight month, and the share of white workers dropped for the third straight month 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:
Early signs of a surge of activity in transportation and logistics are being reflected in our index, with a noticeable majority of businesses raising pay in June and expected to do the same in July. Pay rises in production also dominated slightly in June after a steep drop in May. In most sectors, businesses will again try to keep pay steady or slightly lower in July. And hourly pay continues to be volatile in building and grounds cleaning:
In June indexed hourly pay for general labor rose to a new high for the first time since July 2022. The same happened for runners for the first time since August 2022. But indexed pay rates for custodial intermediate warehouse roles, which continued their steady climb, may finally top out in July.
Pay for bartenders and bussers rose slightly in June but was steady for other hospitality roles. In general, pay for hospitality and other services peaked early this year and has not exceeded that level, suggesting a more liquid labor market during the spring and summer than in the previous two years:
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Five surveys per month are delivered via the Instawork Pro app. Random samples of Pros who have worked at least one shift in the past 12 months may be shown a one-question survey when they open the details for a shift. No Pro receives more than one survey per month. The surveys continue until they collect 1,000 responses.
The repeating questions on Pros' labor market situations are as follows:
1. Please mark all the kinds of work you will do this week:
2. Please mark all the kinds of work you would like to do each week:
3. In total, how many hours will you work this week at all your jobs?
4. In total, how many hours would you like to work each week at all your jobs?
The PSI gauges the overall direction of changes in hourly pay from month to month, much the way a purchasing managers' index measures supply chain activity.
To begin, for each month, we measure the average hourly pay offered by each business on our platform for each role in each region. If the business offered shifts for the same role in the same region during the previous month, we record whether the average rose or fell. A rise is recorded as +1, a fall as -1, and no change as 0.
Next we weight this signal by the average number of shifts the business offered for that role across the two months. For example, if the business offered 10 shifts for line cooks in the Houston area during February and 18 shifts for the same role in the same region during March, then the weight would be 14.
We group these weighted signals by the Census Bureau's occupational categories and take the weighted average for each category. Then we multiply the weighted average by 50 and add it to 50. This yields a PSI between 0 and 100. At 0, the PSI implies that all businesses in the sample offered lower pay. At a PSI of 100, all businesses offered higher pay. At a PSI of 50, businesses that raised or lowered pay did so with equal weight (or loosely, equal numbers of shifts).
At present we cover six major occupational categories. These are the numbers of workers they represented in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' counts of hourly workers in 2022, and their shares of the total reported number of hourly workers:
To create a national PSI, we calculate a weighted average by weighting the PSI for each occupational category by its share of hourly workers above. The resulting national PSI represents occupational categories that cover roughly 44% of hourly workers in the American labor force.
Sample selection for our pay trends is similar to the method for the PSI. Businesses that book shifts for the same role in the same region during consecutive months are the units of observation. For each pair of months, we calculate the change in the average hourly pay offered for the given role in the given region. Examples of roles are line cooks, forklift drivers, and custodial staff.
Next, as for the PSI, we weight the changes in pay by the average number of shifts across the two months. Then we calculate a weighted average of the changes at a national level for each role. To create an indexed trend, we have chosen July 2021 as the starting point, where the indexed hourly pay for each role is set to 100. We then use the monthly changes to map the trend from August 2021 onward.
At present we publish the indexed trends in hourly pay for 14 of the roles staffed on our platform:
