Modern Workforce: A Fresh Approach to Social Services Eligibility

Ever notice how many people you know are driving for a rideshare, delivering groceries, or freelancing on the side? It's not just a trend; it's a massive shift in how Americans earn a living. While the flexibility of gig work and self-employment is appealing to many, it often means facing life without traditional benefits. This puts a spotlight on our social safety net programs and the agencies that administer them. The challenge? Verifying income and employment for this new, more fluid workforce is much different than verifying information on the W-2 workforce.

An Independent Workforce Boom

Over the past four years, the United States has seen the addition of nearly 34 million independent workers. This includes everyone from ride-share and delivery drivers to freelance designers and consultants. The gig economy is expanding rapidly, growing three times faster than the traditional workforce, driven by its inherent flexibility and the ease with which individuals can connect with work through digital platforms.

This growth has also led to a significant overlap between traditional and non-traditional employment. Many individuals are supplementing their W-2 jobs with side jobs, with 39% of gig workers also holding W-2 employment. This creates a complex financial picture, making it challenging to assess income and employment for social services eligibility purposes.

The Growing Need for Social Safety Nets

While the gig economy offers freedom, it often comes without the traditional benefits, like employer-sponsored health insurance or paid time off, that many W-2 employees receive. This lack of a built-in safety net means that a significant portion of the modern workforce relies on public assistance programs more than ever before.

For instance, 15% of gig workers receive public assistance, and a higher percentage are seeking healthcare assistance through programs like Medicaid because they lack insurance through their non-traditional employment. This reliance is further highlighted by a 2022 national survey of gig workers, which found that 30% had used the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) within a month of the survey, twice the rate of W-2 employees (15%). Moreover, about 1 in 5 gig workers (19%) reported going hungry due to an inability to afford enough food. These statistics paint a clear picture: the gig and self-employed workforce, despite its growth, is often a vulnerable population in need of critical support.

Challenges for Social Service Agencies

For social service agencies, verifying the income of this changing workforce is proving particularly difficult yet critical to address the new federal mandates in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The traditional systems designed for W-2 employees struggle to accommodate the variable income of gig and self-employed individuals. Based on a 2025 Equifax study,  5% of benefit applicants experienced an average monthly income decrease greater than 40%, while 21% saw an average monthly increase exceeding 40%.* Additionally, 9% of applicants changed jobs at least once during the year. This instability underscores the critical need for current and insightful income data.

Agencies still largely rely on manual, high-touch processes for verifying non-traditional income. In a recent poll conducted during an Equifax webinar,  78% of agencies said they still rely on applicant-provided documents, often a "shoebox method" of receipts, ledgers, and tax forms. This cumbersome, unstructured approach can lead to:

• Increased Caseworker Workloads: Manual or outdated processes can significantly increase the amount of caseworker time needed to process an application and determine eligibility; or even add administrative burdens as applicants look for help with tracking information or documents for their applications.  

• Higher Risk of Human Error: The unstructured and inconsistent nature of applicant-provided, manually entered data makes processing and verification difficult, increasing the possibility for unintentional human errors that can impact program integrity.

• Delays in Benefit Delivery: The manual effort involved can significantly extend interview times and slow down the delivery of crucial benefits to those in need.

An internal Equifax survey seems to validate these pain points: 7 out of 10 managers say they lack access to records of income earned outside of traditional employment, and 46% of benefit decision makers cited direct access to applicant income data as their primary need.

In another Equifax study, applicants also are impacted by any outdated processes. They express concerns about the security and privacy of their personal income information (34% of applicants), and nearly half (48%) worry about making errors on their applications. They desire simpler, more automated processes to make the overall experience easier and less error-prone. In fact, 87% of surveyed applicants stated they are likely to use a secure online platform that connects to bank accounts and simplifies the social services’ application process.

Complete Income™: A Modern Solution for a Modern Workforce

Recognizing these challenges, Equifax developed Complete Income™, a solution designed to simplify income verification for social service agencies and the modern workforce they serve. Complete Income provides a more comprehensive and secure approach to gaining a more informed picture of an applicant's financial situation.

The solution leverages the industry leading database and service  of The Work Number® for more traditional income sources like W-2s and the offer additional insight using  consumer-permissioned data that may include 1099, gig, and self-employment income and expenses. This can help reduce the manual burden on both caseworkers and applicants, accelerating benefit eligibility decisions in an effective manner.

About the TotalVerify™ Data Hub

The TotalVerify data hub from Equifax is a single-source for obtaining the data insights that social services agencies leverage to verify applicant information, including employment, income,  consumer address and phone number history, or learn of incarceration status pointer data. 

The variety of our data means that not only can agencies work more effectively and efficiently to help eligible applicants receive appropriately sized benefits but the state can also maximize the reach of its resources and promote program integrity. 

*Source: Equifax EWS D&A analysis, 2025.