July 26, 2024
Seriously, they probably don’t want readers to walk away with that impression, but that is the implication of the piece they did complaining about people working multiple jobs. The piece told readers:
“A record number of Americans worked more than one job last year, and multiple-job holders as a percentage of the total workforce recently matched the highest share since 2019. That was largely driven by women, who worked multiple jobs at the highest rate since the 1990s in December.”
Multiple job holding is not necessarily a sign of a bad labor market. The share of multiple jobholders peaked before the pandemic in 2019 when the recovery was at its peak. Furthermore, as the article itself notes, people might hold multiple jobs because of increased opportunities, not economic hardship.
For example, 36 percent of multiple job holders report that they do telework. The opportunity to do telework was much more limited before the pandemic. Likely, many of these multiple job holders would not be working at multiple jobs if they didn’t have the opportunity to work from home.
The piece does find people who report experiencing economic hardship, but in an economy with 160 million workers, there will also be millions experiencing economic hardship. For some reason, Bloomberg has chosen to seek out these people out and highlight their situations.
By contrast, millions of people work in hotels and restaurants. Their average hourly wage has risen by almost 31 percent since the start of the pandemic in 2020, far above the 21 percent increase in prices over this period. Surely many of these people are doing considerably better now than in 2020.
For some reason, Bloomberg and most of the rest of the media have decided to ignore these and other moderate-income workers who have seen their situation substantially improve as a result of the strong labor market of the last two and half years.
Comments