Why are fewer Americans holding multiple jobs? The answer?s not easy to pin down. Barista
by day; bartender by night? Based on new data from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, there may be fewer American workers who fit that
description.
A study released this month says that among all
employed workers, the rate of moonlighting or holding multiple jobs was
5% in 2013 (the latest data available), down from 6.8% in 1995. Put
another way, there were 6.8 million workers who held more than one job
in 2013, compared to 7.5 million 20 years prior (though it should be
noted that number of Americans holding a job shrank by 15.9 million over
that same time).
Interestingly
enough, the downward trend holds steady across various sociodemographic
groups of the working-age population as well as across all educational
groups. On average, over the past decade, multiple job-holding has
diminished by 0.6 percentage points every year for high school graduates
and workers with some college education alike, the report says.
Historically,
moonlighting has been common among workers in some occupations and
unpopular in others. Manual workers in fields like mining, construction,
and manufacturing are usually less likely to work a second job.
Meanwhile, workers in professional and service occupations often hold
more than one job. Teachers in elementary, middle, and secondary
schools, for instance, are likely to hold multiple jobs. In fact, in the
profession, the rate of multiple job holding is no less than 13%
historically. It?s surprising, then, that the decline in moonlighting is
present among workers irrespective of their occupation or industry of
their primary job.
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