Multiple jobholders are those persons who report that they
are wage or salary workers who hold two or more jobs, self-employed workers who
also hold a wage or salary job, or unpaid family workers who also hold a wage
or salary job. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2009, 7.3 million workers held more than one job, and the
multiple jobholding rate—the proportion of total employment made up of multiple
jobholders—was 5.2 percent.
Both the number of multiple jobholders and the rate
of multiple jobholding have been stable in recent years and remain below the
levels recorded during the mid-1990s. Among most of the major demographic groups,
“moonlighting” has become less common in recent years compared with the
mid-to-late 1990s. Who moonlights also varies widely, as shown in the graph below from BLS.
The multiple jobholding rate reached its most recent peak (6.2 percent) during 1995–96. The rate began to recede and declined to 5.3 percent by 2002. From 2003 to 2007, the multiple jobholding rate held steady and never returned to its high. Since the start of the most recent recession in December 2007, the multiple jobholding rate has hovered around 5 percent.
Multiple jobholding rates for most of the major demographic groups—men, women, Whites, and Blacks—have exhibited a similar pattern over the 1994–2009 period.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, the multiple jobholding rates of men and women were similar, but since 2002, the gap in rates between men and women has widened as men have worked multiple jobs at a lower rate than women have. In 2009, the multiple jobholding rate for women (5.6 percent) was higher than that for men (4.8 percent).
Among the major race and ethnic groups, Whites were most likely to hold more than one job. In 2009, the multiple jobholding rate for Whites was 5.4 percent, while the rates for Blacks and Hispanics were 4.8 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively. The rate for Asians was 3.2 percent.
The map below shows how multiple job holding varies across the country, with much higher concentrations (most likely the result of heavy farming activities perhaps?) in the central and upper midwest states.
