Breaking Down Key Findings From Hourly Restaurant Worker Study

Tal Clark: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Instant Payments Podcast. I’m your host, Tal Clark. I’m the CEO of Instant Financial, a fintech company that’s modernizing payments and payroll for hourly workers and their employers. I’ve led businesses in the fintech and HCM space for 30 years, and I’m glad you’re tuning in today.

If you like what you hear, please do us a favor and subscribe, leave a review, or suggest a future guest. This podcast features business leaders to discuss some of their challenges and what technologies they’ve used to improve their workplace and the lives of their workforce. Today’s guest is world-renowned speaker, business strategist, and research guru Jason Dorsey.

Jason is the president of the Center for Generational Kinetics, the leading generations and emerging trends research firm. CJ- CGK, excuse me, has worked with over 700 companies around the world to drive business outcomes. He’s also a best-selling author. His latest bestseller is “Z Economy: How Gen Z Will Change the Future of Business [00:01:00] and What to Do About It.”

Jason is routinely featured as a keynote speaker and cited by the media for his research, analysis, and quirky communication style. Jason, welcome to the show. We’re recording on a Saturday because of busy travel schedules, and it happens to be Memorial Day weekend. So I hope you’re having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

Jason Dorsey: Hey, thank you, Tal. Thrilled to be here. You might be the only person to get a millennial like me on a Saturday, so…

Tal Clark: There you go.

Jason Dorsey: Thanks for having me. It’s gonna be great to visit with you.

Tal Clark: You know, what we’re talking about is well worth it, so it’s great to have a chance to catch up and talk about the work that you’ve done and the work that you’ve done on this project specifically. I did a brief intro, but just to get started, I love your background. You and I have talked about it a number of times and you fell into something that you were great at and loved early. So talk a little bit about that in your own words and the research that you guys do at CGK before we dig in.

Jason Dorsey: Yeah, sure. Thanks for that. Yeah, so when I was 18, I wrote my first book. Wanted to help my own generation, and, it was a tough go [00:02:00] there. Took me about two years of sleeping on a floor trying to get the world to know that I had written this book, wanted to help my generation. And then the book became a big bestseller and ended up on the Today Show and The View and all of these TV shows, and ultimately wrote more books.

And then we had this defining moment about 15 years ago where I was in a corporate boardroom with all these execs, big public company, and they were talking about millennials. And at that point, I’d written a bunch of books on millennials, been on 60 Minutes, Today Show, tons of stuff, cover of the New York Times.

And so the CEO was talking about millennials and saying just, honestly, really bad things. I was… And, I’m a millennial, so I was like, is that true? Like, how do we know? And so I asked a very naive question at the board meeting, which was, “Can I see your data?” And I’ll never forget it.

They sent the data. It was about two weeks later, and I’m going through it, and my wife, comes home. her name’s Denise. She has a PhD. She’s much smarter than me, and she’s “What are you doing?” And I said, I’m looking at this data from this famous public company where they said all their [00:03:00] millennials were not good employees, and the data doesn’t match what the CEO said.”

I said, “What do you think I should do?” And Denise says, “We should start a research firm.”

Tal Clark: There you go.

Jason Dorsey: Because if the CEO doesn’t understand his own data, imagine if we gave him data that he could use. And so our real, the sort of the, catalyst for our journey was just to lead original research to separate myth from truth.

That was, it. We weren’t trying to make a point. Weren’t trying to tell stories. We just wanted to see what was real. And then the more we did that research, the more media we got, the more companies hired us to work with them and do original research. And ultimately, now what we’re known for is separating myth from truth, specifically around workforce trends, consumer trends, and generational trends, which obviously leads to this amazing study we got to do with you and your team, which was just filled with so many shocking stats and findings that everybody should be talking about. It’s really eye-opening.

Tal Clark: That’s amazing, and that is a great lead in, because talk about, disconnecting the data from the truth. I think we see some of this and we’ve seen some of this in the [00:04:00] business we’re in, and you guys dug through it, and, it shows up in the report that we’ve done, I think too. So let’s talk about it.

We partnered with you guys, and it’s called Underserved: The Financial Reality of America’s Hourly Restaurant Workers. Can you explain the methodology just so people understand? This is an in-depth look at how restaurant workers are trying to navigate the economy, both tipped and hourly workers.

So just talk a little bit in detail about how you guys do these things and how you did it specifically for this study.

Jason Dorsey: Sure. We, led a custom national study for Instant, which the beauty of our custom studies is they’re weighted to the Census, so they match the Census for age, gender, geography, and ethnicity. And specifically with your study, we looked at hourly workers, and then we looked at hourly restaurant and food service workers.

And what that gives us is a statistically accurate, highly rigorous snapshot of hourly workers in the United States. And we were able to look at those in restaurants and food service and as well as in other industries, and then be able to dig down into [00:05:00] that data and find trends and insights, discoveries, things we don’t expect.

And, I often joke with people like, “We’re real researchers. We don’t know what we’re gonna find.” People ask me all the time, “What do you think you’re gonna find in your study?” I have no idea. that’s why it’s a study. And so what we do is when we field the study nationally, then our research team, we have PhDs and so forth, they go through all the data with me.

We find all the best discoveries, and then that’s what we’re able to share with the world. And it’s important because our goal here with our work is not to prove something right or wrong. What we wanna do is we wanna advance conversation through research, and I think that’s really important. When you think about Instant and the problems that y’all solve, and the workforce trends that were uncovered, it’s amazing how they fit together.

But even if Instant doesn’t, didn’t exist, these workforce trends are still something everybody should be talking about. That, that the challenge of hourly restaurant workers today is extraordinary. It is absolutely extraordinary. And I started out working in restaurants. I was a [00:06:00] busser at Macaroni Grill. I never quite made it to server, but I tried.

I was a barista at a coffee shop. I’ve had all the jobs. And it’s just, I think people have a perception of what those jobs are like or a perception of, what it’s like ’cause they go into restaurants, but it’s not grounded in the reality of those hourly restaurant workers today, and that to me is a huge gap that we’ve gotta fill.

And the study did that in, in many unexpected ways.

Tal Clark: Yeah. That’s great, and it really did. And look, this is not the first study we’ve done with you guys, right? So we’ve done one every two years, this being the latest. Before we had not concentrated on restaurants as much as we did this time, but this is specific to the restaurant industry.

But one of the things that just as we’ve looked at it over the past, this– again, this is our third, is it’s not getting much better, right? And, solutions like Instant have been out there for seven, eight, nine, ten years in some cases, right? And, I think one of the… [00:07:00] you talked about, your example in starting your business as you, as it exists today, is a CEO made a comment that was disconnected from the data, and I think we’re still seeing that today, and I think the perception of the workforce is disconnected from the data too, which we’re showing, have shown in the past and show even more now for the restaurant space.

Jason Dorsey: Yeah. I get to share generational workforce trends. That’s core to what we do, right? We lead research studies all around the world, and then I speak to executives, corporate boards, lots of industry events. I had four events last week. This is what I do every day, and one of the trends we talk about is earned wage access, right?

The ability to get part of the pay that you’ve earned every day. And what’s shocking to me, like to this moment, is I will ask all of these executive audiences, “Do you think it’s a good idea for your employees to have access to some part of the money they earned on the same day they earned it? Is it good or bad?”

Just straight up, right? And we’ll have everybody raise their hand or they’ll yell out good or bad. It’s [00:08:00] hilarious because what’s shocking is when, we ask that of executives, really director level and above, they generally say it’s what? Bad. They think that’s a bad idea. 

Tal Clark: Yeah. 

Jason Dorsey: And I always joke with them back. I’m like, “The people who say it’s a bad idea are generally rich.” They’re higher earning, right? ‘Cause … And, there’s this fallacy that we’ve seen through our work where people believe having a two-week pay period helps people that are of lesser means to learn how to budget and that is complete and total nonsense, right?

Bills don’t necessarily align with a pay period. They never have. It now it’s worse with late fees and the need for payday loans and advances and all this, these sorts of things. And so what we find is that access to the money that you’ve earned is more meaningful now largely than ever before because of all the ways people are dinged when they don’t have that access to the money.

And when we go to frontline managers, and this is the flip. When we go to frontline managers and I ask them, “Do you think it’s a good idea for your employees or team members to be able to have access to their money?” And they’re like, [00:09:00] “Yes.” And it’s interesting because they’re the ones that are leading these frontline workers, and the reason is they’re getting asked for cash advances or a loan.

“Hey, Mr. or Mrs. Manager, can you give me a loan to help me out until payday? Can you do this?” and it puts them in an awful position, and they just wanna help their employees. So the further up the corporate ladder we go, the more disconnected they often are from the front lines. And by the way, this is even if they work there because maybe they started their career there, but it’s been 10, 20, 30 years.

Frontline workers today, particularly hourly workers, and especially in something like restaurants. They are really struggling. And anything we can do to help them bring their best selves to work, to better support their families, to better support whatever those dreams are, to better navigate that daily challenge with a time of, inflation, everything else going on, is huge.

But the challenge, and this is what always shocks me, is just how big the, perspective or perception gap is between senior leaders and those on the front lines. And it’s not that they’re not smart. Senior leaders are [00:10:00] very smart. They’ve been there, they’ve done it. It’s just the reality today is very different and very hard, and anything we can do to bridge that, particularly something that scales, that’s not a one-off, I just think is, really important for the world to know about.

I really do.

Tal Clark: Yeah.

Jason Dorsey: You can tell it’s my soapbox now. Now that I’ve seen the data, I’m like, “I’m all in.” This is a massive problem. It’s a crisis we’ve gotta find solutions for, and y’all just happen to have one.

Tal Clark: One of the things that really jumped out to me, Jason, in this whole thing, there were some specific comments, some very personal comments that you guys pulled out. The data is pretty startling as well, but then you look at the, personal comments, right? 61% said that they had skipped a meal, right?

Because they didn’t have access to funds that day, right? What stood out to you specifically about the report? Any specifics that you saw that you just, I can’t believe this, right?

Jason Dorsey: Yeah, I think the stat among all of the many stats, and it’s totally worth reading the full report, the one that jumped out at me was [00:11:00] that 75% are living paycheck to paycheck. We have this perception of abundance a lot of times, in our country, and to have an entire workforce that’s paycheck to paycheck, three-quarters of them, I think is startling.

And I think, these are people out there working. They’re on their feet. They’re making it happen every day. And for three-quarters of them to have to say that they’re living paycheck to paycheck, I think is shocking, sobering, frustrating, disturbing, all of those, and really a rally cry to say what can we do to help them?

If we could get people to, to start thinking in terms of solutions, and this to me is one of the key things. It doesn’t mean that we need to pay them more, right? That’s a solution, but maybe one of the solutions is just figuring out how to help them get their money sooner so they, they don’t feel that stress, and they can avoid late fees and payday lending and all those awful things.

So I, I do think that the pressure and the emotion and the intensity of what this workforce feels, it shows up in the data, is something that we should [00:12:00] just be talking about a lot more, and I think leaders should move up their priority list in order to be able to serve them. ‘Cause people who are stressed about money, they don’t bring their best to work, right?

They’re trying to do so many things, and, anything we can do to help them, I think is what leaders are called to do.

Tal Clark: That’s right. And just, and as we talk to prospects and clients and partners about these things, that we offer both tips and earned wage access, there’s always things going on within these businesses, right? They are having to make decisions between do I change my HCM software, right?

Do I change my time and attendance software? And many of them are doing these things, it seems like on a recurring basis, to me, on a recurring basis that’s far too often in many cases maybe. And we just have to get them to see this as a priority. And you are, we’ve talked about it, you are an expert.

You guys do a lot of research on generations. Could some of what we’re seeing in the disconnect between [00:13:00] management, executive management, and the workforce, could that be more– could that be generational in itself?

Jason Dorsey: Yeah, for sure, right? When we look at these hourly workforces, a lot of them do skew younger. Often not as young as people think, but they definitely do skew younger. Many of them have entered the workforce later in general, ’cause that’s just how it’s happened, particularly in the US, and they often don’t have as much savings ’cause they haven’t been working as much.

Plus, when you look at inflation and the impact of the rising cost of living, puts them in a more tenuous, financial position. And so all of these things can be generational, they can be life stage, but they’re not going away, and I think that’s the real thing that we’ve seen as long as we’ve been doing these studies with Instant, is like these trends are not going away.

In fact, in many cases they’ve accelerated, and it’s gotten harder. And I, I don’t… This is the thing, I don’t blame leaders and executives for the situation. They’re also doing the best. what we need to do is just raise awareness around what’s going on and [00:14:00] solutions that are economical because these are often low margin businesses anyway.

So if we can roll out things that are, not as expensive, that are very cost effective and really solve a massive problem, and we’ve seen this in other studies that we’ve led with you in the past, right? People take worse shifts. They’ll come in on the last minute, they’ll work weekends.

There’s a real desire to work, but access to money has just become so incredibly important. And this is money that people have earned. We’re not saying give them money they haven’t earned. And I think when executives and leaders really, get that, they get excited about it, and we’ve just got to cross that bridge.

At least that’s what the data shows.

Tal Clark: Yeah. This costs them nothing to put out there and it costs the employees in many cases nothing to access it and, it’s a value benefit, right? It improves all these situations that we’re talking about. What did you see, what did you guys see in the study? What did it reveal to you about the differences, the impact of, [00:15:00] the not having access, the impact of working in these roles across the generations within the roles?

I think we surveyed between 16 and 65 are the ages we covered in this study. Within those generations within that group, what are the differences that we see? Were there any?

Jason Dorsey: Yeah, there are differences, but the thing that we see on the whole is that, solutions like earned wage access, are really well received and valued by every single generation, and I think that’s really important that some things work better, by generations or by gender or by geography or certain situations, job role.

But at the end of the day, it’s really rare when there’s such pronounced pressure or stress, in this case financial stress, across every single group that we look at. So to me it’s yeah, certain groups do respond even stronger, but the reality is it was a majority of all the groups that basically said all of these things would make my life better.[00:16:00] 

Tal Clark: Yeah.

Jason Dorsey: All of these things would make my work life better as well. it’s really pretty powerful.

Tal Clark: No doubt. And look, you’ve spent, quite a bit of time on the road talking to executive groups. You mentioned that a little bit, and, you have made this part of the things that you’re talking about, among- amongst these groups when you’re speaking, right? You’re, you’ve talked about earned wage access.

You’ve talked about, the need for earned wage access and tip access and just making sure your wages, and you talked a little bit about the reaction. What was it that initially grabbed your attention about this opportunity, to provide these services to these employees? Because you devoted some time to it, right?

And some attention to it, which we really appreciated, but what is it about it that, that grabbed your attention?

Jason Dorsey: When we started studying this, which I think was around 2017-ish, the, there were not really solutions that were obvious. And so what was happening is we were looking generationally, and people, when they needed [00:17:00] cash, were doing payday loans. They were going to their parents. They were, staying with their roommates longer, living at home longer.

They were doing all these different types of workarounds that they could think of, just to try to navigate through something. So we didn’t look at it from a solution standpoint, we actually looked at it from a problem standpoint, that this was something that was not going away, and it was costing them money on top of money, meaning that they were borrowing money, and then they was paying high interest rates, and they were getting caught in this awful cycle.

And so that was the problem that we saw, was really more about financial distress and frustration and really not being able to get out of that, create that sort of economic mobility. And then it just so happened that EWA solved that problem. But back then, nobody had ever heard of it. Nobody had heard…

Even now, I speak at events, people still haven’t heard of it. And we’re looking at it not as a product, but more as a strategic solution. And when we think about it that way, what’s really wild is that younger generations that went to work, let’s say, in some of these restaurants or other retailers that have known about [00:18:00] EWA for the last few years, that’s what they expect everywhere they go now.

Tal Clark: Yeah.

Jason Dorsey: They expect it in healthcare, they expect it in manufacturing, they expect it in professional services. It’s just, it’s an option that they now look for and expect. So for other generations, it’s still “Oh, I’ve never heard of, the EWA or the ability to get some of my earned wages every day.”

But for younger generations, if you started out in places that had that and offered that, and you started working there as a teen, that’s just what you expect. You expect that everywhere you go.

Tal Clark: No doubt.

Jason Dorsey: And, it puts companies at a diff- disadvantage if they don’t offer that. And, I think the, other part that people get, confused about, at least from our work on it is, they think it’s something that’s mandatory or something they have to take, and the reality is this generally is completely on demand, right?

It’s if you need it when you need it, and they take it a lot less often than people assume. But when they take it, they really do need it, and that is when employers can really show that they have their employees’ back by offering solutions like that. That’s what the study really shows.

Tal Clark: Yep, that’s great. [00:19:00] That’s a great point. Completely optional. There’s no burden, and again, these are wages that are earned, right? We’re not talking about… And the alternatives, let’s talk a little bit briefly on this, and then we’ll wrap up around the study. But, the alternatives that we uncovered in the study, were any of those that jumped out to you as well, the alternatives to not having access to wages?

You’re running out of money. Some of the things that people go and do to… Hey, you gotta bridge the gap one way or the other, right? What are some of the things you saw that you’re like, “This is just nuts”?

Jason Dorsey: Yeah. These are things like we saw credit card cash advances, which have massively high interest rates. They’re just dealing with overdraft fees, late fees, not paying certain things, paying others, playing that shell game. We see, the buy now, pay later, BNPL, like all kinds of other short-term solutions.

And the challenge with basically all of those is that they compound in a negative way. And that’s the problem. By [00:20:00] forcing people to make a series of not great choices, ’cause that’s the only choices they have, they actually get in a worse spot. And so you’re creating this sort of very vicious cycle, around access to pay that is totally avoidable now.

And when you look at that, you’re just … these are hardworking people we’re talking about. These are hard jobs. They’re not saying, “Gosh, I wish I could just work more because that’ll make it better.”

Tal Clark: Yeah, no.

Jason Dorsey: Many of them are already working. They’re doing everything they can.

Tal Clark: Usually multiple jobs, right?

Jason Dorsey: Exactly. And so I, I just think that this is the conversation that should be elevated throughout the restaurant industry, restaurant and food service, but also even more broadly than that. When we look across all kinds of industries, and I think one of the things that fascinates me is, ’cause I speak in healthcare a lot and all these other industries, is once people understand the solution, they go, “Oh, we should totally offer that.

We have nurses that would love to get that,” right? “We have people that are line managers in the manufacturing plant that would love to get that.” [00:21:00] It’s so much even broader than this. It’s just that they don’t understand the problem, so therefore the solution isn’t as valuable. But once they do, they get pretty darn excited about trying to find ways that don’t cost extra or are not very invasive to be able to solve the problem.

So I’m super optimistic that the more people know about this, the more they’re gonna be like, “Oh, yes, we just totally need this.” but that’s why we do these studies to separate myth from truth.

Tal Clark: That’s right. And it’s and we’ve got to message this to leadership, right? So what would be your message to restaurant leadership, after completing this study, right? The fourth of these studies that you’ve done for us, third or fourth of these studies that you’ve done for us, this being the most impactful, I think, focused specifically on the restaurants.

What is your message to leadership?

Jason Dorsey: Yeah, the, for me it’s all about bridging this divide, around what’s going on with the front lines. And to me, sometimes, execs and leaders, and rightly will be like, “Okay, Jason, that was a national study, but I don’t know that it, it applies at my restaurant or my franchise or my chain.”

And so I always say to them, “Great, [00:22:00] let’s assume it may or may not. We don’t have to pick a side, but let’s go out and survey the front lines and ask them, would having optional access to, let’s say, half of your pay after every shift make your life easier? Would it get you to show up, more often, pick up worse shifts, do all these things, reduce your financial stress, help you with your family life, sleep better?”

Just ask the questions, because what I find is when you ask the questions, one, people are shocked that you do, so great job there. But the second is, the answers will speak for themselves. And based on what we’ve seen, it’s very consistent. And then, the, to me, this is the whole secret to all this, then we can have conversations grounded in data.

Tal Clark: Absolutely.

Jason Dorsey: About being right or wrong or fanciest degree or job title. It’s this is what’s really going on. How do we solve it? And then all of a sudden you get a lot of people on board because it, you create a lot of alignment that’s built around data, which builds, built around trust and not perception.

So I really push… I was speaking at this event, not too long ago. It was really neat. It was actually, it was a healthcare event. And it was all CEOs of big [00:23:00] healthcare hospitals and organizations and I’m talking about EWA, as I do a lot. And, one of the CEOs, luckily sitting in the middle of the room, cut me off, and he was like, “Hold on, Jason.”

It was a smaller group, about 150. He’s “I just want everybody to know, we actually rolled this out and it worked like magic.” And he starts telling everybody… I didn’t know him, I didn’t know any of this stuff, but his point was we had no idea how much our frontline was struggling. And mind, this is healthcare.

These are, some of the higher paying jobs, but it was a real issue, and I, it just… I think sometimes too, you just gotta hear from execs, that pe- that are your peers, And I think if we could do those two things, it would really change the conversation and help a lot of people.

Tal Clark: Okay, that’s huge. Look, we always wrap this up with a round of rapid-fire questions. If that’s good with you, we’ll get you in a couple of sentences and, probably learn a little bit more about Jason Dorsey and what you can share with those that aspire to be the next Jason Dorsey. 

Jason Dorsey: Oh.

Tal Clark: Habit [00:24:00] or routine that you follow every day?

Jason Dorsey: Yeah, lots of them. I’m very routine-driven. I would say probably the most obvious is I journal pretty much every day, By hand.

Yes, by hand, and I have every journal I’ve ever written.

Tal Clark: Me as well. We might be the only two in out of what? Every couple of thousand people or so, but that’s great.

Jason Dorsey: Yeah.

Tal Clark: What is one book or podcast that you recommend reading or listening to?

Jason Dorsey: I like to read The Alchemist every few years. I think it’s a great book about getting clear on, priorities and the journey. So yeah, I think that’s always… And it’s an easy read, so strong easy read rec instead of my research books.

Tal Clark: There you go. That’s great. That’s great. What’s an interesting trend about Gen Z that flies under the radar?

Jason Dorsey: Ooh. We’re doing so many studies on Gen Z right now. I would say an under-the-radar trend that we’re seeing really swing back is that Gen Z wants more in real life experiences. Everybody thinks they’re just completely digital, and [00:25:00] that’s not true. We’re seeing a real strong, trend where they wanna get together, whether that’s to play Mahjong or whatever the games are, or hang out, or even retail.

Retail shopping for our clients has rebounded dramatically. They wanna have those in-store experiences. So I think Gen Z has been miscast as digital only, partly because of COVID, and that experience, but now we’re really seeing it swing back to the sort of IRL, in real life experiences, which is pretty cool.

Tal Clark: Okay. that’s great to know. That sounds good. So what advice would you give to someone starting college in the fall and thinking about a career in market research?

Jason Dorsey: Ooh, that’s a good question. I would say the two things that are most influential for market research right now, one is you have to find an area to specialize in because it’s so broad, and it’s easier for clients and companies to know how to work with you if there’s an area that or a certain model or something that you’re really well known for.

Like we’re known for generations, right? That’s what we’re really known for, workforce trends. The other would be to try to [00:26:00] find a mentor. Market research is a pretty established traditional industry, and there’s so much talent in the space, finding somebody who can be a guide or mentor, whatever the word is you like, that you can, use as a sounding board as you explore that career, I think is hugely helpful because like many careers, what people see on the outside doesn’t actually match what happens on the inside of the business or industry.

And getting an early glimpse into that I think would be really helpful, particularly your first year of college. So those would be two. Yeah. I think AI is table stakes. You got… Everybody’s gotta learn how to use AI as much as possible.

Tal Clark: Yeah, no doubt.

Jason Dorsey: One off to the side.

Tal Clark: Yeah, no doubt. all right, last one. What professionally speaking are you most excited about for 2026?

Jason Dorsey: Ooh, I’m working on a new book around, non-obvious, business principles that I’m super excited about, a culmination of all my work. And, it’s fun. It’s fun to write. I started out as a writer and then became a speaker and a researcher, and now to be able to go back to writing, it just, it really fills me [00:27:00] up.

So super excited I’m working on the new book.

Tal Clark: Super. That’s super. Jason, you’re a great friend, and this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate it. you’re an excellent speaker, and we appreciate all the work CGK has put into this important research. For our audience, you can find Jason on LinkedIn. We’ll link to his profile in the show notes, and we’ll also link to CGK’s website, as well as a place where you can download this research for free.

You can follow along with the new episodes at instant.co/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for tuning in to the Instant Payments Podcast.