•Press Release COVID-19 Health and Social Programs Workers
Washington DC — Before the pandemic, the trend of workers holding more than one job was rising. Since the pandemic, unemployment has risen, and the number of workers with multiple jobs has fallen precipitously.
Multiple Jobholders: Who Are They and How Are They Impacted by the Pandemic?, released today by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), looks specifically at multiple jobholders who lost one or more jobs during the pandemic.
The pandemic has revealed inadequacies in many federal agencies and programs. Measuring workers, whether employees or self-employed, with multiple jobs is no exception. With the extension of temporary Unemployment Insurance from the CARES Act set to expire at the end of this month, the shortcomings of federal statistical agencies to provide accurate measures of impact is exposed.
By one measure, the Current Population Survey (CPS), the number of employee multiple jobholders declined by 33 percent from 2019 to April of this year. Even though there was a slight rebound in June, the number remains far below the pre-pandemic level. However, other labor market data sources might provide a more accurate picture of multiple jobholders, with a much higher number of individuals who engage in two or more forms of paid work. That is a topic of a forthcoming paper by the same authors, Hye Jin Rho and Shawn Fremstad.
