Gig Workers Are Falling Into the Payday Loan Trap
New tech, old problems
The ads are all over Snapchat and Hulu. They’re shot to look like the same slice-of-life vertical video you’re already watching, showing normal people who want to do normal things — take a girlfriend to a movie, change a baby’s diaper, buy “my bridezilla sister a last minute wedding gift” — all made possible by the Earnin app, which lets you “stop waiting for payday.”
Earnin offers the workers of tomorrow — the Uber drivers, the DoorDash deliverers, the Wag walkers — a portion of their hourly or contractor earnings almost immediately. Like any payday loan service, the idea is to cash out for hours worked before your check clears, and Earnin pays itself back when you receive your direct deposit. Assuming all goes according to plan, anyway. It doesn’t always, revealing kinks in the service and the difficulties faced by people who use it.
(This is Medium’s second story about Earnin. You can read the first, about the app’s security, here.)
TheBlessedDriver, a YouTuber who vlogs about the gig economy, explained in a recent video that because Grubhub has eliminated its daily pay options, she uses Earnin to get paid every day, up to $500 a week. Similar to services like DoorDash, Grubhub hires gig workers to deliver food that customers order online from…
