The inflation rate is at a 40-year high, and we are still recovering from a pandemic while geo-political uncertainty has impacted the price of goods and services across the board. So, is it any wonder that 69% of workers in the United States tell ADP that they expect to request their wages early—at least once within the next 12 months?

How would that work without putting an undue burden on employers? Costs are high, margins are tight, and committing payroll on a biweekly/monthly basis can be a minor miracle, without worrying about mid-week, one-off payments hurting employees.

And yet, they have to be helped—it is the only decent thing to do. Are they to be left to the mercy of credit lenders or payday loans? Or experience the misfortune of missed bills, mounting late fees, or forfeiture of essential services? Hurting employees who are days away from receiving their next paycheck, in many cases, face financial distress, and is demonstrated by the fact that 55% of American households would not be able to meet a $400 emergency.

There exists a way to address this problem without creating new ones. Each working employee has an unused pool of money they can tap into between paychecks, without having to pay interest. It is their own earned wages. You see, while almost every worker in the United States is paid periodically (usually biweekly or monthly), they in fact earn money daily, or more specifically—hourly.

For every hour an employee has worked, he or she obtains an absolute right to be paid wages for that hour. Those wages are dispensed at a point in the future—on payday. But suppose the employee could access them in the middle of the week? That is all earned wage access (EWA) is. It uses technology to remove the temporal distance between a worker and his or her wages. They earned it, let them use it. This simple solution can go a long way in providing relief to workers without placing a burden on employers. When EWA is done well, it’s easy for employers to exists outside of the payroll process and causes zero disruptions to regular operations.

EWA is broadly popular among workers of every age group, at every education level, and at every income level in the United States. Employers who offer this benefit find that it makes their employees’ lives better and helps them to recruit and retain top talent for good measure.

And there you have it. EWA is a solution that uses technological advancements to turn the constraints of the past into opportunities of the future. Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread? You might just come away thinking that once you become familiar with EWAs’ usefulness and simplicity.

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Ankit Jhunjhunwala is the Director of Product Marketing for Wisely by ADP.