I already work two jobs – now I might need to do three

For the first time since the 2008 recession, I found myself on LinkedIn wondering if I could stretch my talents to copyediting for a shoe brand, in addition to the two other jobs I already do. Nothing wrong with copyediting at all, except that I’m not very good at it, and the last time I did it, it was after being unemployed for a year. But with rising mortgage rates, electricity bills, food costs – even my gym is getting in on the act – along with no wage increases, having multiple jobs, including one that comes with a guaranteed pay cheque, is becoming the norm.

This isn’t a sign that things have suddenly gone wrong for me – they’ve been going wrong for a while. I’m not alone. A trifecta of unemployment rates rising by 5 per cent, job vacancies falling to their lowest level in five years and slowing wage growth means that things are tough all-round.

Data from the Office for National Statistics show roughly 1.3 million people in the UK currently have a second job, which is a slight decline from the 1.35 million people recorded in 2025. But I believe there is a missing piece of data: the overlap between those already in solo employment who are having to take on multiple jobs to pay the bills and those who are in paid employment trying to set up businesses.

While having multiple jobs is common among demographics such as the working class and single parents, it appears to be spreading into other sectors of the middle class and even DINKs (dual income, no kids) who were thought to be largely immune from this.

Increasingly, I’ve noticed friends and colleagues struggling in a way that seems unprecedented, ranging from those working in creative sectors to those working in the medical sector having to shore up the uncertainty of gig economy work with paid employment and vice versa. Others who work in finance desperately want to leave their jobs but have been scared by former colleagues still looking for work a year on.

People who are used to the steady stream of a monthly pay cheque are having to take on side hustles to survive. As a result, they are entering the most precarious of systems, where your ability to earn is based on your health. The most worrying thing for me is the current lack of padding around my finances and work that has come off the back of a cost of living crisis in 2024, an even worse economy in 2025, and a shaky 2026. There is a gulf between how much it costs to live and how much we are getting paid.

Everyone I talk to these days is worried, from friends in C-suite positions to those who are one job away from needing to move to a different country. It isn’t just the lack of jobs or the poor pay, but the inability to predict when things might hit an upswing – an uncertainty caused by AI, which has been disrupting almost every single industry. I’ve found that while AI might not be taking my writing job, it dominates all of the public speaking opportunities I might have gotten because it’s all anyone wants to talk about. Women’s empowerment, diversity and equity have been unseated by the robots, it appears.

I have seen a few people who work in the same industry as me segue into AI-proof jobs, such as the author Katherine Ormerod, now studying for a construction qualification. I must say, it seems tempting. One influencer friend who works in fashion said that she’d had to launch multiple businesses to stay afloat. “Someone asked me if it was a side hustle,” she’d said, “and while they are all things I want to do, such as flower-arranging and social media consultancy, they aren’t passion projects. I need them to pay the bills.”

All of it resonates. I’m wondering whether it is sustainable to pay into my pension, continue to pay a mortgage that increased by 40 per cent in 2025, and prepare myself for the increase in energy bills we’ve been told is coming our way. It was barely survivable in 2024, it feels impossible now.

The hardest part of this is that there doesn’t seem to be a solution in sight. Chancellor Rachel Reeves recently announced temporary VAT relief for families over the summer holidays, but when it comes to compounding debt, it probably offers the barest whisper of relief. And if you aren’t part of a family as I am, or in a dual-income household, you’re forgotten about altogether.

Perhaps this is a lesson in hubris. That we are now in an era where everyone must abandon notions of pride and do what they can to survive. Because while leaning on the Bank of Mum and Dad is a great option to have – if you have it – it is, at best a temporary solution. Many of us will need something more robust and sustaining, and it is unclear as to which direction this may come from, if it comes at all.