Yes, Working Four Jobs to Make Ends Meet is Possible

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Recently, Beto O’Rourke, a former Texas representative who is a candidate for president, told the story of a mother he met in Las Vegas. She worked four jobs while raising her child with disabilities and living in her car. Skeptics immediately raised questions, casting doubt about the veracity of O’Rourke’s anecdotal tale.   

But, it turns out that O’Rourke didn’t fabricate the story or embellish it. If anything, he sold the woman short. According to CBS News, “Gina Giambone, 59, of Las Vegas, actually has five gig-economy jobs that combined pay about $15,600 a year. That’s the equivalent of what she would make with one full-time federal minimum wage job if she could get one. She can’t because she also cares for her daughter. They live in her car, which is also Giambone’s office as she works for different contract food delivery services.” 

The question, the reporter, suggested, “Isn’t whether Giambone exists but, instead, how many people like her exist?”   

The Federal Bureau of Labor Statics (BLS) struggles to come up with an accurate count of the number of workers working multiple jobs. 

The Bureau’s statistics do show that during the “Great Recession [2000 to mid-2010], there was a noticeable increase in the percentage of multiple part-time jobholders. This metric leveled out in 2010 and 2011, but it has subsequently resumed a slow upward trend.”   

Recent statistics show that about 5 percent of those 16 and older work at least two jobs. The imprecision is due to the inability to contact people repeatedly over time or to track second, third, or fourth jobs that aren’t reported as such. Some people who work full-time, for example, may not consider the writing projects that they tackle at night or the free-lance design work project they spent the weekend on as second jobs. Some multiple jobholders prefer to be paid in cash to avoid taxes.   

According to the BLS report for 2018, the numbers of people with multiple jobs is rising, and 318 of them worked two full-time jobs. Demographically, for African Americans, it was 5.2%; for Asians, it was 3.1; for Hispanics and Latinos, it was 3.5, and for whites, it was 5.1%.   

My sisters and I, at one time or another, worked multiple jobs to support our families. We held a full-time job and at least one part-time job during the pre-gig economy, known to some as the ice-age. My younger sister, who retired from the Air Force, supplemented her income during her junior-ranking years working as a waitress and then as a cashier in the Offutt AFB Officer’s Club.   

When my daughter was young, I moonlighted as a waitress on Friday and Saturday nights. It was temporary until my finances improved.

My older sister, however, juggled three or four jobs for nearly a decade. She had a full-time position as a manager at a direct mail house. Four nights a week, she would sell bouquets of roses to patrons of local bars and restaurants. She performed as a clown and magician for birthday parties on the weekends. When the flower-lady job dried up, she replaced it with another job. She picked up 25-pound data files from a warehouse, loaded them onto a large truck, drove them to banks and financial institutions, where she unloaded them and picked up new sets of canisters to deliver to the warehouse.  

It was grueling work.  Sometimes, she would fall asleep while standing up. Working three jobs, managing a home, and raising three children is not healthy in the long term. But, again, in the grit and grind of the world, it’s all about finding a way to make ends meet.   

The New York Daily News published a story about a 34-year-old New Jersey woman who worked four jobs and died while napping between shifts in her car on the side of the road. Her death was due to carbon monoxide fumes.     

In a New York Times article written by guest writer, Brittany Jones, “I Have A Bachelor’s Degree and Still Work 4 Jobs to Make Ends Meet. She wrote: “My life revolved around work. If I wasn’t at the office pushing papers, I was jumping from one auction house to the other. I was lucky ― there’s almost always a need for data entry clerks. Tomorrow morning I’ll head off to work at a job that pays too little, with a degree I do not use. As my husband leaves for yet another overnight shift, I wonder when we will start that family, we so often discuss.”    

The U.S. labor market has come a long way in recent years in terms of job growth, but one key measure has barely budged–lukewarm wage gains as well as broader shifts in the economy. (See my recent post on income inequality, Sept. 20, 2019).    

Working multiple jobs comes as no surprise to people thirty and younger? They are more often working several jobs to pay off student loan debt, to help them navigate the improving, but still gloomy, job market, and to supplement low entry-level salaries.