Transactions on the Instawork platform track the pay of hourly workers and the total cost of their shifts to local businesses. This briefing includes indexed cost trends for various roles in regions across the United States and Canada.
Because the Instawork platform is part of a competitive labor market for hourly work, the trends shown here for total business costs are expected to follow the costs of other sources of staffing over time. Data used in this briefing may include data on future shifts that have been booked on the Instawork platform but have not yet taken place.
Business cost trends
Business costs continued to rise in hospitality during the past quarter for all but the lowest-skilled positions. In part this reflects the exodus of workers from hospitality industries since the beginning of the pandemic; more than a million have not returned, and businesses are paying more to lure them back.
Meanwhile, costs for light-industrial roles remained at levels very similar to those of a year ago. The data suggest that businesses will face stable or slightly lower costs of compensation for many roles in August, though some of these figures reflect what are essentially opening bids for labor.
Here are the trends in business costs for 14 roles transacted on the Instawork platform where we have sufficient data for a time series beginning in July 2021. The charts include data for shifts in August 2022 that have already been booked, where available:
Hospitality and food service
After months of steady increases in most hospitality roles, businesses are targeting slightly lower costs in August 2022.
Entertainment
The majority of lasting increases in costs had ended by the fall of 2021, with only a spike in costs for concession or stand workers when the baseball, basketball, and ice hockey seasons overlapped in the spring.
Industrial and other services
Business costs for custodial work spiked in the summer of 2021 but has been steady since. Other roles, particularly in warehouse work, have shown modest increases at most.
We will continue to track these changes in business costs in the quarters to come. We welcome your suggestions for additions to this briefing.
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