Summary
As workers face frozen salaries, inflation and uncertainty about layoffs, some are turning to side jobs and “polyworking” as a hedge—adding second, third and sometimes fourth jobs to increase income and reduce the risk of a sudden job loss, the Associated Press reported. For many, the strategy is not only about earning more, but also about building a backup plan if employment becomes unstable.
One example is Katelyn Cusick, 29, who works a full-time job as a visual merchandiser for Patagonia. She also manages social media influencers for a German shoe brand for 10 to 15 hours per week, sells paintings through her Etsy shop, and ushers at concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cusick said she started the side hustles “just because I wanted to switch it up,” and she added that “every day is different and every day feels like a new day.”
Cusick said the added income helps with student loans and with managing the high cost of living, which she described as a challenge since wages at her full-time job have stayed flat for several years. The AP report also described other workers supplementing their main roles with gig work through apps such as Uber and Grubhub, often in response to instability at work or a belief that they may eventually lose their income.
Sociologist Alexandrea Ravenelle, a gig economy researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tied the shift toward side jobs to broader economic pressure. She said, “We have seen stagnant salaries, we’ve seen inflation, we’ve seen the cost of living overall increasing, even beyond our inflation measures,” and added that “So people are looking for ways to supplement and to build themselves a little bit of a safety net.” The AP report described that “portfolio careers” are emerging as a related approach, in which workers combine multiple roles that each build different skills.
Elaine Chen, director of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts University, said some workers treat their careers less as a single long track and more as a set of parallel revenue sources. She said, “Rather than having one job that you can have for many, many years and thinking about your career progression as a linear pathway, some people are putting together multiple side hustles based on their skills and interests and making the money work by having multiple revenue streams.” In Cusick’s case, the report said, side work helps keep her social media marketing skills current.
The AP report also included advice for people considering launching a side business on top of a full-time job. Chen told the reporter, “You have to love it,” adding that it is “usually it is something that the person is really passionate about.” Josie White, 31, said she pursued public speaking after finding effective treatment for schizoaffective disorder and said she wanted to help others feel less alone. White, who works full-time as a fundraiser for Shelter the Homeless in Salt Lake City, said she began looking for opportunities to share her experiences with mental illness “to reassure people that there is hope and a light at the end of the tunnel.”
White described building her speaking business by starting with unpaid work before pursuing paid engagements. The report said that over the past year she booked 10 speaking engagements, and four of those will be paid. White said she is re-investing money she has earned into developing her public speaking skills, and she told the AP, “The goal is ultimately to get paid, but right now I’m putting in the legwork to reach that,” adding, “It’s starting to snowball.”
The AP report said some side gigs can generate income quickly, including gig work such as delivering groceries or driving passengers. Tom Ritter of Syracuse, New York, described supplementing his income as a workforce management specialist at a nonprofit by making deliveries for Instacart and Spark, Walmart’s delivery platform, on top of his full-time job. Ritter said the extra income helped him pay his bills, especially after he recently lost his day job, and he added, “For me, even that extra couple hundred dollars a month went a long way, and it still does.”
Even for people drawn to gig work, Ravenelle cautioned against relying too heavily on it. She said gig work can be hard to transition back out of into full-time permanent jobs, where workers typically wait two weeks or more for a first paycheck, and she said gig work carries a stigma among some employers. She also said that if gig workers earn good wages, the platforms typically change the algorithms so workers earn less, adding, “The house always wins when it comes to the gig platforms.”
The AP report also urged caution when opportunities appear online and promise large returns. Ravenelle described research in which she spoke with people who saw online videos about making money selling microgreens. She said, “They thought they could make thousands of dollars a month, working from home, growing microgreens in their kitchen, and then selling them to high-end restaurants,” and she added, “No. The person who sells you the grow lights and gives you the classes is the person who’s making the money.”
Finally, the report described the time tradeoff involved in adding a second job or career. White works Monday through Thursday at Shelter the Homeless for 40 to 45 hours per week, with Fridays off to practice speaking skills or generate new business. She told the AP, “I wouldn’t describe my life as balanced,” but she added, “But am I enjoying it? Yes. And I think that matters.”