A Lot of Oregonians Are Working Two Jobs These Days

Moonlighting is much more common here than in the average state.

Grindhouse Coffee on North Rose Parks Way. (Chris Nesseth)

A new study from the Oregon Employment Department shows that Oregonians in 2020 were more likely than most Americans to work more than one job.

In total, 102,000 Oregonians worked multiple jobs, which is 5.2% of all employed workers over the age of 16, compared with 4.5% of the general population of the United States.

But this is not a new trend. Oregonians have worked multiple jobs at a higher rate than other Americans since 1994, excluding 2004, employment department economist Anna Johnson found.

The most recent peak of people of working multiple jobs in Oregon was 6.7% in 2012, but the overall rate of working multiple jobs has decreased in both Oregon and the United States since 1994.

There are many reasons people end up working multiple jobs: 38.1% give the reason of wanting to make extra money, 25.6% work extra jobs to meet expenses or pay off debt, and 17.6% say they work another job because they enjoy the work.

Additionally, Northern states tend to have higher multiple jobholding rates than Southern states. In Idaho, 6% of people work multiple jobs, whereas, in California, just 3.3% do.

But most secondary jobs are temporary. Every month, more than 30% of people who work multiple jobs go back to working just one job.

Here’s what the history of moonlighting looks like, compared to the national average:

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