Acorns is expanding into the hiring market.
The eight-year-old fintech company announced a partnership with online job market ZipRecruiter on Monday, which allows Acorns clients to browse and apply for jobs within the app.
Acorns’ hiring portal is the first of its kind for a financial services company. The launch had been on the company’s road map, but was accelerated by sky-high unemployment during the pandemic, according to Acorns CEO Noah Kerner.
“The more you earn, the more you can save and invest for the future — we wanted to connect those dots for people,” Kerner told CNBC in a phone interview. “By aligning that within Acorns, we can help people earn extra money, so they can invest more money.”
The job portal will show full and part-time jobs, as well as remote job opportunities. It also allows users to set up job alerts, and see career development content.
Kerner pointed to a lack of income as Americans’ biggest barrier to investing. Thirty four percent of respondents in an Acorns survey released Monday said not investing, or reaching their savings goals, was due to not making enough money. The income issue was a more common savings barrier for men than women, at 39% and 30%, respectively.
Pandemic-related shutdowns and an economic slowdown have left millions of Americans sidelined from the labor market. The most recent total for jobless claims hit the highest number since late August as the labor market struggles to get back to the pre-coronavirus mark. The unemployment rate has fallen to 7.9% but is still more than double its pre-pandemic level.
The Irvine, California-based company’s most popular offering allows customers to automatically invest the spare change from debit or credit card purchases. For example, if an Acorns user bought a cup of coffee for $2.75, the mobile app would round up to the nearest dollar and put that remaining 25 cents into an Acorns investment account. That money is then put into professionally managed index funds. It has since added other financial services and education offerings.
The average Acorns customer is roughly 32 years old with an income of $50,000 to $60,000. The company said it has grown to more than 8.2 million customer accounts — up from 4.5 million roughly eighteen months ago, and $3.2 billion assets under management.
Despite volatility during the pandemic, Kerner said more customers had been sticking with an investing plan and keeping their money in the markets.
“There are periods in time when there were really rocky markets, and people tended to pull money out,” Kerner said. “It’s encouraging to see more and more people saving and investing, especially during a difficult time.”
Disclosure: Comcast, which owns CNBC’s parent company, NBCUniversal, is an investor in Acorns.
