Portable Credentials Help Hourly Workers Keep Income Flowing

PYMNTS Intelligence’s continuing explorations into the Labor Economy reveal that roughly 60 million Americans earn $25 an hour or less, representing 36.5% of total U.S. employment while driving about 15.1% of consumer spending, or more than $1.7 trillion annually.

Because of that scale, even modest shifts in wages or employment continuity have measurable macroeconomic consequences. PYMNTS, in collaboration with Ingo Payments and WorkWhile, estimates that a 1% change in Labor Economy wages translates into a $17 billion swing in GDP.

But there’s a constraint: mobility. PYMNTS Intelligence and its collaborators describe today’s hourly workforce as “safe but stuck.” Labor Economy workers report high confidence in keeping their current jobs but far lower confidence in finding new ones, a lock-in dynamic that limits their ability to improve outcomes.

When workers feel secure but immobile, they prioritize stability over optimization. Housing and transportation take precedence, while healthcare compliance, subscriptions and credit health become negotiable. From a financial services perspective, that behavior increases the likelihood of recurring liquidity shortfalls and weakens traditional underwriting signals.

Skills That Travel

Against that backdrop, skills portability can function as a practical form of job security.

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster has written that the next phase of Labor Economy innovation moves beyond faster pay toward preserving worker progress as people shift between employers. Today, skills, certifications and reliability records are typically trapped inside individual platforms or companies. When workers change roles, that accumulated value often resets. Webster points to portable credentials, standardized certifications and benefits that follow workers as mechanisms to make experience visible and transferable.

“AI becomes an enabler here, documenting skills, validating experience, matching workers to higher-value roles and making progression visible and transferable,” Webster wrote.  The data in the Labor Economy analyses show that individuals establish online presences across employers and use platform-based work as a buffer against income volatility, with gig and shift platforms accounting for 15% to 30% of total income for many workers. Infrastructure that allows their skills and reliability to move as easily as their labor can be a key way to keep the work coming in.

The federal data underscores how widespread credentialing already is. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Requirements Survey finds that in 2025, 22.9% of civilian workers were required to hold a license or certification, 6.5% required an educational certificate and 1.2% required an apprenticeship. In healthcare practitioner roles, that figure rises to 93.4%, while 17.3% of construction and extraction workers require apprenticeships.

These credentials represent verified skill, training and readiness to work. When recognized across employers and platforms, they shorten hiring cycles, reduce mismatches between workers and roles, and increase the probability that a worker can move quickly from one job to the next.  Platforms that combine shift matching, rapid onboarding and wage disbursement reduce those timing gaps while also building persistent work histories. Over time, these systems create verifiable records of attendance, performance and skills that can travel with workers, raising their odds of staying employed even as they move between roles.

That continuity has downstream effects. Since Labor Economy workers account for more than one-third of U.S. employees, so stabilizing their income directly stabilizes consumption. Recent Wage to Wallet data shows that December’s 1.9% monthly wage increase, if sustained, would add $32.5 billion to annual GDP.

From Employment Stability to Credit Signals

For lenders and risk teams, portable credentials and platform-based employment histories introduce a new category of underwriting input.

When workers can document skills, training and reliability across employers, income becomes more predictable and employment gaps shrink. That reduces dependence on overdrafts and short-term credit used solely to bridge timing mismatches.

Stable work histories, credentialed skills and consistent platform engagement provide alternative signals of capacity and persistence. As those signals strengthen, lenders gain clearer visibility into repayment potential, while workers benefit from improved access to mainstream financial products.

In that sense, portable credentials operate as more than résumé enhancements. They function as economic infrastructure that lead to healthier credit outcomes and a more resilient economy.