# Who Borrows: Employment Behind Short-Term Loans | paykedge.com

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Источник: https://paykedge.com/research/who-borrows/

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# Who Borrows: Employment Behind Short-Term Loans

The picture of a payday borrower as jobless is wrong. Most are working when they borrow.

- **7** — employment groups compared
- **Employed full time** — largest group
- **51.7** — its share of borrowers, %
- **Employed full time** — group most likely to roll over

## The numbers

Employment groups ranked by share of all surveyed borrowers.

| Employment | Share of borrowers, % | Respondents | Fell into rollovers, % | Would NOT do it again, % | Median loan, $
| Employed full time | 51.7 | 6230 | 45.5 | 44.7 | 329
| Employed part time | 17.9 | 2159 | 42.7 | 41.7 | 273
| Unemployed | 10.3 | 1240 | 20.6 | 20.2 | 117
| Self-employed | 8.3 | 1005 | 28.6 | 28.4 | 164
| Retired | 5.1 | 619 | 38.3 | 40.2 | 241
| Disabled | 4.7 | 562 | 41.1 | 33.3 | 221
| Student | 1.9 | 232 | 37.4 | 30.1 | 200

## How we counted

- Employment is self-reported at the time of borrowing.
- Shares are of all surveyed borrowers, not of the population.

Data updated 2026-07-31. Full dataset: [data.csv](data.csv).

## Use this research

Free to cite, quote and chart — with attribution. Journalists and researchers are welcome to reuse the table and the dataset.

**Citation:** Paykedge, “Who Borrows: Employment Behind Short-Term Loans”, 2026. Available at [https://paykedge.com/research/who-borrows/](https://paykedge.com/research/who-borrows/)

[Download the PDF report](report.pdf) [Download the data (CSV)](data.csv)
