Income & Employment Trends During COVID-19
Unemployment claims have exceeded 36 million in America, and our economy is experiencing a shift no one saw coming. In these unprecedented times, consumers have taken drastic measures that are changing their borrowing habits, financial behavior and employment status. Some occupational changes have been out of their control (e.g., layoffs or furloughs), when others may be due to the consumer applying for another job just to bring in additional income to support their household.
With these changes in behavior and variance in financial standing individuals are finding themselves in, comes the need for you to refine and even alter the way you provide services to your customers. That’s where Clarity Services’ data comes in. At Experian’s Clarity Services, we’re committed to keeping you up to date on recent industry trends and market changes to help you detect and navigate consumer behavior and performance changes quickly.
Employment and income indicators like pay frequency, increases or decreases in reported income amounts and number of recent employers may signal that the consumer has had a change in employment and requires additional review or verification by you. We are monitoring attributes that specifically measure financial stress and instability of income, employment and bank account information more frequently and at a more granular level. The best part? We’re sharing those results with you.
Year over year, we’ve seen consumer income increase. What you may not expect is that 2020 shows even higher incomes than 2019. Additionally, after measuring the number of consumers who reported an income in 2019 and reported an income during COVID-19, we saw that more of them reported an increase compared to those who reported a decrease.
Along with income changes, consumers are also experiencing changes to their employment status. We’ve noticed that consumers were less likely to have reported multiple employers in the last six months (prior to May 12th) than in the six months prior to January 1st (before COVID-19 started to affect the US).
Both of these statistics show us that while our economy and the lending industry as a whole have been affected by the economic distress, the majority of consumers aren’t experiencing the negative impact (decrease in income, needing to apply for more jobs) we thought they would.
Interested in learning more about the income and employment trends Clarity has seen in the alternative finance market? Download our infographic to dive head first into the numbers.
Link to download page: https://www.clarityservices.com/understanding-managing-covid-19-infographic-2/
