Cost-of-living pressures sees Aussies take on a second job

A trend that started after the Covid pandemic is continuing, with a huge number of Australians taking on multiple roles to deal with the cost of living.

The post-Covid boom in the number of Aussies working multiple jobs continues as higher cost of living pressures means more workers are taking on a second gig.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that in the March quarter there were 963,100 Aussies – or 6.5 per cent of the workforce – who had more than one job.

While this is actually down from the previous quarter where 999,500 Australians held multiple jobs, it is still a sharp uptick in workers looking to diversify their incomes compared with the years prior to Covid, where around 5 to 6 per cent of Aussies took on a second gig.

Seek senior economist Blair Chapman said the spike in cost-of-living pressures from inflation meant more Australians needed to take on extra work.

“We’ve really seen cost-of-living, especially for employee households, increase quite a lot over the last couple of years,” he said.

Women are more likely to take on multiple roles compared to men. NewsWire / David Mariuz

“If you’ve got a mortgage, those repayments have increased quite a bit over the last couple of years so I suspect people have sought a second job just to reach the higher cost of living recently.”

Australians are holding onto their second job despite the overall unemployment rate holding firm in recent months, around the 4.1 per cent mark.

The main driving force behind this trend is underemployment meaning workers are getting fewer hours from their primary employer than they’d like.

“We are seeing more people being employed in industries where we tend to see a lot of multiple job holdings,” Mr Chapman said.

“For example, we’ve seen healthcare and social assistance grow and that is one of the industries where multiple job holdings are most common.

Aussies in the healthcare sector are most likely to take on multiple jobs. Picture: NewsWire / David Crosling

“That comes down to the nature of the work, where you have shift work and one business may not be able to provide all the hours an employee wants so the individual has to work across multiple sites to get the hours they are desiring.”

Many of these multiple job holders are Australians aged between 20-24, with women more likely to hold a second role over males.

In contrast older Australians aged between 60 to 64 are the least likely to hold a second role.

“When we look at a lot of the multiple job holders, they tend to be younger. Maybe it is a university aged person who can’t work full-time but can work nights and weekends,” Mr Chapman said.

“While maybe it is not the same job but for them it is probably good they can work multiple jobs with flexible hours.”