When $200K isn't enough: Seattle-area workers juggling jobs to stay afloat

When Stephen O’Bent was laid off in the summer, he didn’t just look for a new job.

He looked for multiple.

At a crossroads, O’Bent and his wife, Shannon, decided to try out a new division of labor. She would return to work full time, following years as the primary caregiver for their two young children. He would take over more child care duties, while working part-time jobs and freelance gigs instead of a traditional 9-to-5.

“It was not the path we were expecting to take this fall,” O’Bent said.

Like Stephen, many people in the Seattle area are working multiple jobs instead of just one. And like him, many didn’t originally plan for things to go this way.

Working multiple jobs was traditionally seen as the domain of low-income workers. For those earning close to minimum wage, extra shifts and second jobs have always been an obvious way to earn more money. But today, people across income levels are balancing more than one job. Some are drawn to the flexibility of gig work. Others are pressured by high costs of living — from housing to child care to debt. Usually, both factors play a role.

“Traditional jobs don’t pay enough, and everything is too expensive, especially in larger cities like Seattle,” said Shelly Steward, chief research officer at the Workers Lab, a nonprofit that conducts research on labor issues.

In her talks with workers, Steward hears over and over that having just one job doesn’t cut it anymore. “People pick up another job or drive for Uber on the weekends or find whatever ways they can to bring an additional income to meet basic expenses.”

It’s difficult to quantify just how many people work multiple jobs. Recent national surveys indicate that anywhere from 5% to 20% of workers earn income from more than one source. Estimates vary widely in part because there’s no fixed definition of what it means to be a multiple jobholder.

That could be a person with two wage jobs, a person who owns two small businesses, a person who picks up freelance work from several sources or someone who mixes and matches across an array of different income types depending on the time of year.

“We don’t have a specific number we can lean on, but the range is very revealing,” said Hye Jin Rho, an assistant professor at Michigan State University who focuses on the changing nature of work.

Despite the difficulty in capturing the prevalence of working multiple jobs, there are clues that suggest it’s increasingly common.

The rise of platform-based gig work is an especially useful indication that more people are taking on several jobs. That’s because, unlike a traditional job with a fixed schedule, these jobs provide workers control over what they do and when, said Steward. People can take up gigs and schedule them around their primary job, child care, school and other responsibilities.

In the past decade, economists have noted a rise in workers reporting self-employment income on their taxes, with much of it coming from gig work. Banking researchers have also reported upticks in the number of accounts receiving income from gig-work platforms.

“Self-employment has gone up consistently over the past decade,” Steward said.

When confronted with affordability issues, most people take on extra jobs to stay afloat. “It is confirmed many times over in conversations with people engaged in this work that it’s like an individualistic safety net.”

We talked with a few Seattle-area workers who work multiple jobs to hear why and how they came to this arrangement.

When one job isn’t enough

For many, a single source of income simply doesn’t cover the cost of living.

Noel C. has worked multiple jobs for almost all her adult life, from college through graduate school and now into her early 30s. She currently works full time during the day, while also teaching two night classes at a local university. (Noel requested that her full last name be withheld because she’s currently applying to other jobs.)

Between her jobs, she estimates she spends 70 hours per week either working or commuting.

“I’m a zombie at the end of the day,” she said, describing a workday where she is up at 5:45 in the morning and doesn’t wrap up until 10:15 at night. “I feel like I’m not really a part of society in a way. I have to extricate myself so that I can just be a worker.”

Noel doesn’t feel like she has much of a choice.

In 2023, she and her husband bought a house in Mountlake Terrace. The pair wanted to stop paying rent and start building equity. But their mortgage payments are high, at around $4,300 a month. On top of that, Noel also has debt she’s paying down — about $51,000 in student loan debt, a personal loan that she took out to replace broken appliances in the new home and a credit card balance from an emergency car repair.

Earning enough income to cover all of these costs means cobbling it together from multiple sources. Combined, Noel and her husband make a total household income of $225,000 per year.

“It’s ridiculous because that number is high,” she said. “When I think of it, it’s like, ‘How is this even possible?’”

She imagines what it would be like to not carry as much financial stress as she does, to get takeout coffee with colleagues without feeling guilty or to go grocery shopping without worrying about the bill. She also wonders if buying a house — something she aimed for all her life — was a mistake.

“I’m doing all the right things,” she said. “I’m still feeling like I’m coming up short.”

Working to supplement benefits

Some in Seattle combine hourly wage jobs with other sources of income, creatively patchworking together the money they need to get by.

Liz Jurcik, 44, is a former health care executive. This summer, she became partially paralyzed, and she could no longer work as much as she used to.

“For the last decade, I’ve had a really great career, I’ve had disposable income, I don’t have that now,” she said. “You don’t know what life is going to throw at you.”

This fall, she was waiting for the Social Security Administration to adjudicate her case for disability benefits.

In the meantime, she’s been renting out her backyard hot tub online through a platform called Swimply. She was so successful at it that she now earns enough through rentals to cover the costs of utilities and payments on the loan she had taken out to construct the tub.

“I wash a lot of towels,” she said. Last month, Jurcik also found a part-time job working the front desk at a physical therapy office in Fremont, where she earns $25 per hour. She felt ecstatic to be earning money again.

“When it’s taken away from you, you don’t realize how much contributing makes you feel whole,” she said.

Still, her income won’t be enough to cover her costs, such as mortgage payments and insurance premiums. To make up the difference, she was drawing money from savings while she awaited the decision about disability payments.

For some older adults, working multiple jobs can supplement limited Social Security income.

Rodney Wheeler, 78, balances two jobs in customer service, one at Climate Pledge Arena and another at the Convention Center in downtown Seattle. In the summer, he also works at the waterfront, greeting cruise ship passengers. The jobs pay between $22 and $25 per hour, and he works about 30 hours per week.

He likes the work because it’s flexible and helps him stay socially active.

“It keeps me busy, keeps me connected to humanity,” he said. At some point last month, he was about to hit his 14th-straight day of working and was also helping to plan the Halloween party at his apartment complex.

But Wheeler doesn’t just work for fun.

Each month, he receives about $2,500 in Social Security benefits and a small veteran’s disability payment. The money helps cover his needs: groceries, utilities and rent for his subsidized senior-housing apartment in Queen Anne.

But he also has about $10,000 in credit card debt, and the work helps him pay down that balance. He expects to have it zeroed out in the next two years, if all goes according to plan.

“I want to leave this world even.”

Child care needs

For O’Bent, who was laid off this summer, switching to working multiple jobs was less about money and more about flexibility.

Before the layoff, he was a full-time music teacher in Redmond for nine years. Today, he earns income through many different commitments, Tetrised together in a tight schedule.

He works at least 20 hours per week between two part-time jobs: O’Bent is the minister of music at the First Congregational Church of Bellevue, where he oversees music programs, as well as a choir director at the Northwest Boychoir. On top of that, he does vocal coaching, plays in bands and recently took on a freelance project adapting music from a video game for an orchestra. These additional gigs bring his total working hours to as high as 40 per week.

The arrangement has opened a world of new possibilities. He gets to take on creative projects that he used to turn down, and saves 15 hours a week on commuting to the Eastside from Greenwood.

He spends substantially more time caring for children — around 60 hours a week — which would otherwise be a major expense. Already, preschool for his younger son costs nearly $1,000 a month, for three hours of care per day, four days a week. The O’Bents live close to family who help out, as well. When offered work, he typically asks if he can bring his kids along.

The household income dipped slightly with the switch, from $150,000 per year to $130,000 per year. If O’Bent didn’t take on multiple jobs, money would be even tighter. Compared with last year, the family goes out to restaurants and shows less often. They also recently decided against a Disney trip next summer.

Still, they’re content with their life, and all their needs are met. O’Bent is open to finding a traditional job again in the future. But for now, he’s happy about how things worked out.

“I did love that job, and I do miss it,” O’Bent said, about the position he lost this past summer. That said, “I have experienced some unexpected relief not working there anymore, and it has given me the chance to say ‘yes’ to more other things, especially being with my kids more.”