Let me say up front our research indicates moonlighting- working 2 or more jobs - has become much more common in the U.S. over the past decade. But not everyone agrees.
According to the Pew Research Center's article Moonlighting is less common now, despite what you might have heard, moonlighting has been declining for years.
Key quote from the article:
Both in terms of raw numbers and as a share of all employed people, fewer Americans are working more than one job than in the mid-1990s. Working two jobs or more has become less common, not more, since the end of the Great Recession.
The article says there are about 6.8 million Americans working 2 or more jobs, which is about 4.6% of employed Americans. This is down from a peak of 6.6% in 1996.
Pew's analysis is based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
A recent study by the Freelancers Union and Elance-oDesk paints a very different picture. They say there are at least 23.6 million Americans who work 2 or more jobs. This is about 16% of all employed people. They also suggest these numbers are growing.
The Freelancers Union/Elance-oDesk report says multiple job holders fall into two broad segments:
Moonlighters (14.3 million). These are individuals who work regular full-time jobs and also do some amount of freelance work.
Diversified workers (9.3 million). These are our serious hustlers, the folks pulling in income from multiple sources, including traditional employment and freelance work. A diversified worker may have a 20-hour per week bartending or retail job and supplement her income with freelance graphic design work and some time as an Uber driver.
So who's right?
The answer depends on how you ask people about whether or not they have 2nd jobs and how the word "job" gets defined.
The Pew data comes from a BLS survey that specifically asks about 2nd "jobs".
The Freelancers Union/Elance-oDesk survey asks respondents a series of questions such as:
Do you do any work outside of your primary position to earn additional money?
While this doesn't sound like a big difference, we think it is.
Our research has shown that most people do not consider minor sources of secondary income as "jobs" - even if the income is important to them in terms of maintaining their standard of living.
This is especially true for income that is sporadic, such as renting a room on Airbnb, or related to a hobby or passion - such as teaching dance on an occasional basis.
Because of this, if we ask people who have sporadic, hobby related or relatively minor revenue generating activities if they have 2nd jobs (like the BLS does), they generally tell us no.
But if we ask about other sources of income (like the Freelancers Union/Elance-oDesk did), people who told us they don't have 2nd jobs will often say yes, they have other sources of income.
Because of this effect, we think the Freelancers Union/Elance-oDesk survey is correct in saying 20+ million Americans have multiple sources of income.
But at the same time, the BLS and Pew are technically correct that only 6.7 million Americans say they have 2nd jobs.
Because this is such a wonkish topic, I'd like to stop here.
But these differences really matter because the results of each survey present very different views of the state of the U.S. job market and economy.
The Pew Report suggests a job market and economy that is strong and getting stronger. Otherwise more people, not fewer, would need 2nd jobs.
The Freelancers Union/Elance-oDesk report suggests an economy where many millions of Americans are cobbling together multiple income sources to get by (their report says the primary reason people freelance is "additional income" and they report freelancers, on average, generate about $13.5k per year via their freelance activities).
This view of the economy and job market is not so positive.
Much more research is needed on this topic. We will be releasing new data on this later this fall and will continue to report on this issue.
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