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- Some white-collar workers are secretly taking on second and even third full-time jobs for more cash.
- One 23-year-old told The Guardian he gave his third job to his sister, who was trying to find work.
- "I attend the meetings to show my face, and she would do the bulk of the work," he told the paper.
As millions of Americans consider leaving their jobs, another subset of workers is making a very different decision, instead choosing to add more work to their plates.
Some white-collar employees who are working remotely have secretly taken on second and even third full-time jobs, becoming "overemployed," The Guardian reports. One 23-year-old in the US who had three jobs ended up giving one of them to his sister, who was having trouble finding work, according to the newspaper.
"I just gave her my corporate login and told her what to do," the worker, identified in the article as Sam, told The Guardian. "I attend the meetings to show my face, and she would do the bulk of the work."
The overemployment trend has gained steam with the rise of remote work, which has often meant less employer supervision of workers. This means juggling multiple jobs in secret is usually more feasible for wealthy, white-collar workers since their work can frequently be done remotely, which isn't often the case for blue-collar workers.
A 25-year-old software engineer in the UK, told The Guardian he was often playing video games in his spare time and thought he should use that time to make more money instead. The man, identified in the article as Jamie, said he has taken on a second full-time job, this one in software development, and now brings home twice as much money as he did before.
"It was way easier than I thought it would be," Jamie told The Guardian. "Both companies have very low expectations, so I'm not really struggling to get away with two jobs."
Overemployed workers can sometimes run into trouble tending to multiple jobs at once. Juggling meetings, for example, can be tricky.
"You have to either be muted on both and without a camera or act like you can't attend one of them because you are super busy," Jamie told The Guardian. "I haven't run into any problems. It's quite chill."
A digital community for workers with multiple full-time jobs has taken shape on Reddit, Discord, and Overemployed.com. The website's founder, a 37-year-old tech employee in the US named Isaac, told The Guardian he started job-searching after hearing about layoffs at work and was ultimately able to more than double his salary, going from making $160,000 to $340,000.
"Doing two remote jobs at once was already happening; it was the biggest open secret out there in tech," he told the newspaper. "The pandemic just accelerated the trend and made the environment more friendly to not just tech."
One California worker, identified as 47-year-old Katya, told The Guardian she took on a second job in payroll after accumulating massive debt over hospital bills from her son's death.
"I thought I was the only one doing it and for a while felt really bad," she told the newspaper. "But I could finally pay my bills and get food without worrying about what else I needed my money for."
The Guardian did not explicitly say it had verified employment for the sources in its article.
source https://www.businessinsider.com/employees-take-secret-second-jobs-remote-work-overemployed-more-money-2021-11