Multiple Employment: The Start of a Trend?

Remote work, once an oddity among U.S. workers, is now the norm – a June 2022 McKinsey study found that 58% of U.S. workers say they can work remotely at least some of the time. Remote working opens up new challenges for employers – the latest being the trend of multiple employment.

Some remote workers have found it possible to work two (or even three) full-time jobs with remote work. Having a side-hustle or gig on top of a regular job is not new, what is new is that some are taking advantage of the work-from-home lifestyle to gain a second income.

Multiple employment, also known as overemployment, is when a full-time worker accepts another full-time position at another company to earn a second, additional salary.

While some workers may have the wherewithal to pull off working multiple jobs, those in leadership positions are less enthused with the multiple employment trend. In October, the CEO of Canopy shared a message on LinkedIn stating that the company had fired two employees that were taking advantage of the multiple employment trend.

Here’s a snippet of what he wrote:

“We’ve caught and fired two recent hire engineers who never quit their last job at a big tech co when they came to ‘work’ for us. They were following a new trend of picking up a second, full-time job while lying about it to both employers. This is not about side hustles or moonlighting. These were people holding down two, full-time synchronous jobs and lying about it – trying to be in two meetings at once, etc. Their early performance was really bad, and fortunately we have great managers who sniffed them out very quickly.”

The Canopy CEO went on to add that this situation is not to be confused with that of lower-income workers picking up a second job to pay for necessities like food and clothing.

When any worker takes on a job at second workplace, it’s only a problem if there is deception around the person’s current job status. Multiple employment only applies to full-time workers attempting to deceive employers about their job status in order to gain at the expense of both employers.

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