Fed Economists Reveal Who’s Really Working Two Jobs Now—it’s Not Who You’d Expect

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The percentage of workers with multiple jobs has returned to pre-pandemic levels, but remains below its 1990s peak.
• Self-employed and middle-income workers are leading the growth.
• Side jobs and gig work are increasingly common but often go uncounted in federal data.

Americans are moonlighting at pre-pandemic levels again, but those with more than one job are not who they used to be.

About 5.5% of workers had more than one job in July, a Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond analysis of federal data shows. That puts the rate back within the 5% to 6% range common before COVID-19, though still below the 6% to 7% of the mid-1990s.

The share of workers with multiple jobs fell to 4.1% during the pandemic, as layoffs hit all over the economy.

Holding down extra jobs is providing essential income for many American workers. Income from non-primary jobs makes up more than a quarter of the earnings of multiple jobholders, according to a 2021 report by Census Bureau researchers.

Why This Matters

The multiple-job-holding rate can signal both financial strain and that extra work is available, making it a closely watched measure of workers’ economic well-being. But since official figures miss many of the gigs and side jobs workers take on, they offer only a partial picture of how many Americans are doing it.

While the rate is back to pre-pandemic norms, workers who hold multiple jobs look different.

The growth in recent years has been led by self-employed workers whose businesses are incorporated. From 2000 to 2002, local government workers were the most likely to hold a second job, with 9.35% reporting multiple-job status. From 2023 to 2025, that rate for local government workers dropped to 7.62%, with the incorporated self-employed pulling ahead:

Middle-income families—those who earn between $50,000 and $150,000 annually—posted the largest increase in multiple jobholding. In 2021, 4.7% of middle-income workers held multiple jobs; by 2025, 5.6% did.

In the 1990s, about 35% of workers with multiple jobs held a college degree. In 2024, about half of multiple jobholders did.

Richmond Fed economists Kyle DeMaria and Urvi Neelakantan wrote that the official figures miss many gigs and side jobs Americans are taking. The Census survey counts someone as holding multiple jobs only if at least one pays a traditional wage. A worker whose only job is app-based won’t be counted among them.

Yet these gig jobs have become more popular as consumers contend with persistent, above-normal inflation.

A study of state administrative records in 2018 suggested the true rate of those holding multiple jobs was about 8%, about 3 percentage points above the official figure.

Many are using these jobs to plug gaps left by paychecks that aren’t keeping up. The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the year-over-year rise in hourly earnings was outpaced by inflation in July.

But the Richmond Fed economists cautioned against seeing every second job as a sign of distress. Citing earlier research, they noted that multiple jobholders often earn more at their primary jobs than comparable single jobholders, a sign, they said, that second jobs can reflect “capacity and opportunity” rather than insufficient hours at one employer.