The rise of overemployment: why some people are choosing to work two full-time jobs

The first rule of overem­ploy­ment; don’t talk about overem­ploy­ment. That’s accord­ing to one mem­ber of a grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty of employ­ees who hope work­ing two remote jobs can help them reach finan­cial free­dom.

In an unin­tend­ed con­se­quence of the shift to remote work­ing, these employ­ees seek to exploit the lack of over­sight man­agers now have to try and cash in mul­ti­ple pay­cheques from dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies and pro­tect against the risk of los­ing a job in the midst of the pan­dem­ic. 

It’s a trend that has found a home with work­ers in the US tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor, where there is a high demand for tal­ent and the empha­sis is on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty rather than face time with man­age­ment or clients. How­ev­er, there are also peo­ple join­ing the overem­ployed move­ment from the world of finance, design and prod­uct devel­op­ment. 

One prac­ti­tion­er of overem­ploy­ment, who goes by the alias of Isaac Price online, decid­ed to look for a new job after rumours of impend­ing redun­dan­cies began sur­fac­ing at his cur­rent employ­er towards the end of 2020. But, after being offered anoth­er posi­tion, he didn’t hand in his notice. Instead, he decid­ed to try and con­tin­ue work­ing both roles until his stock vest­ed in the first com­pa­ny. 

He says: “I thought I would try it for a cou­ple of weeks and then it turned into three or four months.” Now, after near­ly a year of bal­anc­ing two full-time work­loads, Price has no plans to return to just one job. “It real­ly plays to my strengths,” he says. “Once I had two jobs, I became a lot more relaxed.”

Is overemployment a growing trend?

Price is not alone. Over the past few months he has noticed a spike in peo­ple vis­it­ing his web­site, which pro­vides advice on bal­anc­ing the demands of work­ing mul­ti­ple full-time roles, man­ag­ing con­flict­ing meet­ings and estab­lish­ing low expec­ta­tions with your two employ­ers, with­out rais­ing sus­pi­cions. The accom­pa­ny­ing Dis­cord chan­nel, where peo­ple share their expe­ri­ences of keep­ing up a sec­ond — or some­times even third — job has more than 450 mem­bers.

Although the poten­tial to earn dou­ble the salary is fre­quent­ly cit­ed as a rea­son for join­ing, oth­ers want­ed to remove the risk of redun­dan­cy. This was a par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant fac­tor for those in the US, as employ­ers reg­u­lar­ly sub­sidise employ­ees’ health insur­ance pre­mi­ums – a par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful ben­e­fit dur­ing a glob­al pan­dem­ic. 

Price says: “Soft­ware devel­op­ers have incred­i­ble lever­age; one devel­op­er can cre­ate mil­lions of dol­lars in val­ue for these tech com­pa­nies. We are just treat­ing our­selves like busi­ness­es and diver­si­fy­ing our incomes so that if one employ­er decides to lay you off, you still have anoth­er source of income.” 

Chloe, anoth­er prac­ti­tion­er of overem­ploy­ment who also did not want to be iden­ti­fied by her last name, says: “I have seen lay­offs at every com­pa­ny that I’ve worked with. Nei­ther per­for­mance nor tenure mat­tered. Work­ing two jobs is my way to ensure a good out­come for myself, with­in the lim­its of what’s accept­able.”

A sep­a­rate mem­ber of the overem­ployed online com­mu­ni­ty, who spoke anony­mous­ly, has jug­gled a vari­ety of web devel­op­ment posi­tions across the UK and EU over the past three years in what he describes online as his “dou­ble-job-fuck-cap­i­tal­ism adven­ture”. 

The process has not been with­out its stress­es – at one point he was fired due to a lack of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. “The prob­lem with doing two jobs is that you’re work­ing much few­er hours than would nor­mal­ly be required to achieve the right results. You need to be smart in the way you do things.” 

Although he is cur­rent­ly tak­ing a break from work­ing two posi­tions, he enjoys the finan­cial free­dom that comes with hav­ing two full-time jobs. “Work­ing for some­one else means that you’re allow­ing some­one else to har­vest the val­ue you cre­ate through your work,” he says. “The only way to get out of it is to have enough mon­ey.”

The 27-year-old hopes that being overem­ployed will mean he can save enough mon­ey to retire in his 30s. 

What are the legal and HR issues of working two jobs?

There is recog­ni­tion that col­lect­ing a salary from two employ­ers is ques­tion­able, with Price com­par­ing get­ting caught by a man­ag­er to being found cheat­ing on your part­ner. But he remains adamant that “it’s all per­fect­ly legal”.

How­ev­er, this is how Slater and Gor­don employ­ment lawyer Jo Mack­ie sees it. She claims there are many “lia­bil­i­ties and tricky issues” asso­ci­at­ed with tak­ing two salaries. Although unable to com­ment specif­i­cal­ly on US employ­ment laws, Mack­ie adds: “The num­ber one issue would be mis­lead­ing your employ­er because of the duty of trust and con­fi­dence that you have between employ­ee and employ­er. Often if that’s bro­ken then it’s a suf­fi­cient rea­son to ter­mi­nate a con­tract.”

The sec­ond issue relates to exclu­siv­i­ty claus­es and con­flict of inter­est, as the sec­ond job is like­ly to be with a com­peti­tor in the same indus­try. Last­ly, Mack­ie points to the work­ing time reg­u­la­tions, which applies to the UK and coun­tries in the EU and lim­its work­ers to 48 hours a week, unless opt­ed out of. Although there is no lim­it on the num­ber of hours employ­ees aged 16 years or old­er may work in the US, employ­ees must receive over­time for any time worked over 40 hours with­in a week.

Sarah Beau­mont, direc­tor of HR at Hunter Adams, agrees that con­ceal­ing a sec­ond full-time job from an employ­er could poten­tial­ly be a breach of con­tract, but adds: “From an eth­i­cal per­spec­tive, if an employ­ee is being paid for the same time by more than one com­pa­ny they are deceiv­ing one, if not more, of their employ­ers.”

If an employ­ee is found to have deceived their employ­er, an inves­ti­ga­tion and dis­ci­pli­nary action would like­ly fol­low and could cul­mi­nate in dis­missal for gross mis­con­duct, Beau­mont claims. “Legal­i­ties and breach­es of con­tract aside, attempt­ing to work more than one full-time job is a sure fire way to achieve burnout,” she adds.

For Price and oth­er mem­bers of the overem­ployed com­mu­ni­ty, this may prove lit­tle deter­rent – the secret, after all, is not to get caught. He accepts that one of his employ­ers would prob­a­bly let him go, if they found out, but adds: “I would tell peo­ple to go and get the jobs that your skills can com­mand. If it’s five jobs then go for it, I would take them all.”