70% Of Americans Looking for Side Hustle Work To Avoid Inflation

Many Americans are responding to the rising inflation rates by securing second jobs or working extra hours.

Dark Times

A survey done by Bluecrew, a workforce-as-a-service platform, found that around 70% of Americans say they are turning to a second job to combat inflation. 85% of Americans say they’ve already changed their spending habits accordingly. 72% say inflation has impacted the way they view their job. 57% are actively looking for a new or additional job.

In most cases, Americans who are looking for extra work already clock 40 hours a week. They are attempting to secure extra shifts or pick up gigs on the weekend. Others who are taking on additional work are people who have hourly jobs and are seeking more hours with a different company.

Labor Force Participation

Due to high inflation and other economic concerns, there has been a huge rebound in labor force participation rates and the number of hours people are willing to work. Both of these numbers dropped significantly during the pandemic. Around 5% of Americans have multiple jobs, and 440,000 people have full-time jobs.

Recession Concerns

Employers have been hiring in a tight market and have taken to increasing pay to try to edge out the competition. Flexible schedules, free food, and employee recognition are all examples of perks employers are offering to attempt to beat out competitors.

However, despite the competitive job market, the looming recession has caused some companies to be more conservative. Walmart recently announced plans to hire 40,000 workers for the holiday season, which is a huge decline from the 150,000 retail and 20,000 supply workers that were hired last year.

Many Americans had planned to take on extra holiday work this year to help pay bills, but the job market could become even more competitive for potential employees come December.

Plenty of workers have already voiced their intentions to switch jobs to keep up with rising costs. 65% of workers say that they see themselves looking for new job opportunities in 2023. That number could go up exponentially if a recession causes unemployment to rise.

New Standards

Workers are now saying that the rate of pay is their number one priority when searching for new employment opportunities. Location, scheduling, flexibility, and opportunities for growth follow close behind. Many workers are also turning to side hustles to pull in some extra cash.

Companies that were facing severe labor shortages are now dealing with workers flooding the job market. The unemployment rate has plummeted to 3.7%, which is close to the pre-pandemic levels.

Blame the Fed

Since inflation has risen to around 9%, the Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising interest rates. Just last week, they implemented another round of 75-basis-point rate hikes, pushing the interest rates up to 3.25%. Many people who either retired or stepped out of the workforce during the pandemic have now returned to work due to high inflation.

This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.