With the labor market stuck in a standstill where few workers quit and just as few are hired, icing people out of the jobs they want, some Americans are left to stitch together multiple positions to get by.
The percentage of multiple jobholders as a share of the total employed population was 5.4% last month — accounting for about 8.8 million people compared to the 8.5 million seen 12 months prior, and above pre-pandemic levels, according to Labor Department data. The number of workers who were part-time for economic reasons hit 5.3 million, up from 4.4 million in December 2024, with 1.5 million settling simply because part-time work was all they could find.
The headline unemployment rate, meanwhile, stands at a modest 4.4% — but these part-timers and multiple jobholders who are struggling to become full-time are all considered employed.
The data helps paint a picture of workers’ current economic reality, where people take whatever they can get in an ultra-competitive job market. Laura Ullrich, the director of economic research in North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, dubbed the most recent jobs report “mediocre.”
She noted that just when comparing last month to December 2024, there’s been a noticeable jump in women and older workers holding multiple roles. The growth is concentrated among those working multiple part-time jobs or multiple full-time jobs, defined as those that offer 35 hours or more per week, Ullrich said.
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“When you see people picking up these multiple jobs … you certainly can’t attribute it all to affordability, but I think given what we’ve seen with inflation, and what you see happening in terms of the growth in people with two full-time jobs, it’s reasonable in my opinion to assert that affordability is a part of that story,” Ullrich said.
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, noted that as more workers grab more positions, it could become even more difficult for the unemployed to break into a labor market where the hiring rate is at its lowest since April 2020 and, absent the pandemic, at a level not seen since 2013.
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Ashlynn, who lives in the San Bernardino area and asked to only be identified by her first name, is one of the many workers holding down multiple jobs. She’s currently working two positions, one as a virtual tutor and the second at a community college. And up until recently, she’d been working three.
She graduated with an English degree in June, but has so far been unable to land a full-time gig.
“A lot of us are having to cobble together enough jobs to make almost a full-time one,” Ashlynn said of her fellow college graduates. “A lot of us would work full-time — I would work full-time at one job — it’s just that that’s not the reality.”
Though she likes her two current jobs and believes the one at the community college has the possibility to transition to a full-time role, working multiple gigs has meant inconsistent hours and too-low pay. She recalled that at a previous position in publishing that earned $16 an hour, competition for work and the reality that her colleagues were similarly working more than one job led to bickering, which she stayed out of. Still, she found herself thinking about work constantly.
“We were all kind of jumping at the bit waiting to immediately see that message come through and be like, ‘Oh! Oh! I can do it!’” she said. “Messages would come in at all hours of the day.”
She’s in an expensive area and sees her friends and family members taking on multiple positions, too. And any interview for a full-time position takes away from her ability to earn through part-time roles.
Though she receives food stamps and health insurance through the government, she’d like that to change.
“I do want a job where I can put food on the table, I’d love a normal health plan, I’d like to be able to do more than just make ends meet,” Ashlynn said.
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Lonnie Golden, a labor economist at Penn State Abington, said the Labor Department does not directly ask people their underlying reason for holding multiple jobs, though his own research has found workers often report they couldn’t make ends meet with their full-time job or couldn’t find full-time employment, while a plurality just need extra money.
But: “Way more people are working multiple jobs than the BLS estimates,” Golden said.
Workers’ frustrations with the labor market are bubbling to the surface in sentiment data. Americans’ outlook for quickly landing a position if they were to lose their current job, for example, is at its lowest level since at least 2013, according to survey data from the New York Federal Reserve.
In a speech on Friday, Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman also said the labor market has become “increasingly fragile.”
“The share of those working part-time for economic reasons, meaning not by choice, has increased considerably over the past two months,” Bowman said. “This has coincided with a rise in the share of multiple job holders, suggesting that an increasing number of workers struggle to make ends meet.”
In other words, as Ashlynn put it: “Technically, people are employed, but not employed enough.”
Emma Ockerman is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance. You can reach her at [email protected].
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