The Hidden Costs of Flexible Labor Models: How Working Multiple Jobs Affects Employees

As operations increasingly rely upon flexible labor models—such as gig, part-time, and remote work—it has become commonplace for individuals to work multiple jobs. Across three studies, relying on a combination of transaction-level data from 90,548 customers of a nationwide retail bank, primary survey data, and insights from the General Social Survey, we study whether people with multiple jobs live their “off the clock” lives materially differently from equivalently compensated people who rely on a single job. Inclusive of housing spend, we find that people who are more reliant on multiple jobs spend 17.0 percentage points (p.p.) less of their labor income overall, which is driven by a 15.5 p.p. decrease in the share of income spent on necessities and a 1.9 p.p. decrease in the share of income spent on indulgences. They spend meaningfully more on education and transportation, but notably less in all other key spending areas, including categories traditionally associated with enhanced physical wellbeing, such as healthcare and food, and experiential categories often associated with mental wellbeing, such as travel and entertainment. These patterns converge with responses from the General Social Survey, in which equivalently-compensated individuals who rely on multiple jobs report lower general happiness, lower financial satisfaction, lower levels of mental health, and lower job satisfaction than their single-income counterparts, which in turn corresponds to lower willingness to remain in one’s job. These findings underscore a crucial opportunity for operations to design jobs that promote greater sustainability for employees, both on and off the clock.