The Overlooked Delay Between Hiring and Earning
In 2026, the debate over artificial intelligence in the workplace often centers on anxiety, job security and hypothetical risks. Yet for millions of frontline and seasonal workers, the more immediate problem is not automation – it’s time. Specifically, the days or weeks that can pass between being offered a job and getting paid for the first time.
That gap, rarely addressed in broader economic coverage, has become a critical pressure point as organizations face slow hiring cycles, rising compliance demands and persistent labor shortages. Early labor-market indicators show that overall hiring remains uneven, but roles involving AI skills continue to grow rapidly as employers prioritize workers who can navigate human-machine collaboration, according to an analysis of global job postings by PwC.
Workers Increasingly Use AI, Even as Unease Persists
At the same time, workers are already using AI in meaningful ways. A recent survey found that 77% of U.S. employees say AI tools help them do their jobs better, though many remain uneasy about how these systems influence hiring, evaluation and advancement .Research from Gallup shows weekly and daily workplace AI use continuing to rise, while highlighting uneven training and a significant trust gap between executives and employees A separate analysis found that most people using AI at work receive little or no training, even as leadership overestimates the tools’ productivity impact.
Agentic AI Emerges as a Practical Workforce Tool
Against this backdrop, “agentic AI”, which are systems that can take autonomous actions within guardrails, is emerging as one of the most closely watched technologies in HR and workforce operations. Deloitte identified agentic AI as a defining enterprise trend for 2026, noting that organizations are beginning to adopt digital agents capable of coordinating multi-step workflows, validating data and monitoring compliance across distributed systems
Those trends converge most sharply in frontline and seasonal work, where hiring is high-volume, compliance is fragmented and administrative delays directly impact household income. For these workers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, the distinction between “hired” and “earning” is not semantic; it is financial survival.
FirstWork Focuses on the Hidden Friction in Hiring
One company out of YC Combinator working at this intersection is FirstWork, a workforce-operations platform founded by Vardhan Kapoor and Shubham Choudhary. Both founders have backgrounds building large-scale, regulated systems: Kapoor previously led regional growth at Remitly and strategy at Deliveroo, while Choudhary held engineering leadership roles at Deel and contributed to global workforce infrastructure at Rippling.
FirstWork uses agentic AI to automate the steps that typically stall frontline hiring, like identity verification, license validation, form checking, compliance sequencing and system-to-system handoffs. In high-volume environments, those tasks often involve multiple platforms and jurisdictions, making manual coordination slow and error-prone.
Case Studies Highlight Sharp Efficiency Gains
Public case studies show measurable impact. A recent partnership announcement highlights that FirstWork’s automated workflows have cut time-to-hire by more than 80% while improving compliance accuracy “toward 100%” in shift based workforces. The company has also reported processing more than 2.2 million verification checks and reducing administrative hours significantly across frontline recruiting environments.
Analysts say these reductions matter because delays often result from small, preventable friction points. For instance like an expired credential, a missing signature, an unreviewed document or an untriggered workflow. Each bottleneck can prevent a worker from starting a shift, contributing to higher attrition and lost earnings. Kapoor has described situations where minor administrative errors can cost workers an entire week of income, underscoring how invisible workflow failures can shape economic outcomes.
Hiring Delays Are Costly for Employers as Well
For employers, especially in healthcare, logistics, retail and hospitality, the cost of delays scales quickly. Vacant shifts increase labor costs, force overtime and reduce operational reliability. While companies have invested heavily in applicant-tracking systems, analysts note that many tools were designed for corporate roles, not high-churn, compliance-sensitive frontline hiring.
Adopting AI Requires Structure, Not Replacement
FirstWork’s model reflects a broader shift in HR technology: moving from point solutions to operational systems that handle low-level tasks while preserving human oversight. Governance experts have emphasized that agentic AI in HR requires clear audit trails, escalation paths and human-defined controls, which are frameworks that early adopters, particularly in regulated industries, are beginning to implement
The Real AI Transformation Is Quiet and Operational
What distinguishes the current moment is less the novelty of AI and more the specificity of the problems being addressed. While AI-written résumés or interview chatbots make headlines, the more consequential gains may be happening in the infrastructure that determines how quickly workers can legally and safely begin earning.
A Shifting Metric: Days Until First Paycheck
As the workforce needs to shift and digital systems take on more operational load, the question for both HR and operations leaders is increasingly practical: which parts of hiring require judgment and which simply require speed, accuracy and reliable follow-through?
For frontline workers, the answer may soon be visible not in corporate strategy documents, but in the number of days between an offer and the first paycheck. And for companies deploying agentic systems responsibly, the path forward may lie not in replacing people, but in removing the friction that holds them back.
