A small but fast-growing share of American workers are doing two full-time jobs at once. They aren’t necessarily con artists and many aren’t running themselves into the ground. But they are finding ways to complete the work expected of them while earning two salaries, raising questions about how employers define productivity and a full-time workload.
According to Enhancv’s survey of 1,000 full-time professionals, 50.8% of respondents who reported holding multiple full-time jobs said they received “Meeting Expectations” or higher performance ratings in two or more roles simultaneously last year.
The finding challenges common assumptions about people who hold two jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 8.4 million Americans—about 5.2% of the workforce—currently hold more than one job, near the highest sustained level on record.
The trend suggests that the structure of work may be changing as quickly as the people doing it.
Why is secret overemployment growing so fast?
Several developments have contributed to its growth.
First, remote and hybrid work normalized asynchronous output, so for many knowledge workers, performance is judged by completed work rather than physical presence.
Second, AI has reduced the time required for some repetitive tasks. In the Enhancv survey, 28% of respondents said AI tools have significantly reduced their workload, and 8% said their workload had been cut by more than half.
Finally, an uncertain labor market pushed people to diversify their income. Nearly 80% of those surveyed said a second job provided financial security.
Together, these factors have created a broader shift in how some employees use their working hours. One in four respondents with more than one job said they could complete their primary role in 30 hours a week or less, leaving time for other work.
Workers didn’t suddenly become dishonest. Technology and workplace structures changed faster than management assumptions did.
What does secret overemployment reveal about modern work?
The findings raise a question for employers. Many companies still reward visibility instead of output through measures such as an active Slack status, attendance at camera-on meetings or emails sent after hours. However, the Enhancv data complicates that approach. Just over half of the overemployed people surveyed, 50.4%, worked primarily in an office rather than remotely. Physical visibility, therefore, may not reliably indicate whether someone has another job.
If half of the people holding two roles are passing performance reviews at both, one possible conclusion is that some jobs described as “full time” may not require 40 hours of focused work each week. Their schedules may instead contain fragmented workflows, padded estimates and meetings stacked on meetings. A substantial share of lost productivity in modern workplaces may come not from laziness but from overloaded calendars.
If one person can successfully perform two full-time jobs, what does “full-time” really mean anymore?
How is AI quietly fueling the productivity explosion?
Generative AI can shorten the time needed to complete certain tasks. An email that once took 20 minutes might take three, while an initial report draft that occupied a day could be completed in an hour. Tools can also assist with scheduling, research, light coding and summarizing video calls.
Research has begun to document this effect. When researchers at Harvard, MIT and Wharton put more than 700 Boston Consulting Group consultants through a controlled test, participants using GPT-4completed suitable tasks more quickly and achieved results rated nearly 40% higher in quality than those produced by participants without access to the tool.
McKinsey has estimated that generative AI could add $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion to the global economy annually, with knowledge-worker productivity accounting for part of that potential value.
The question is who benefits from the time saved. For now, some of it appears to be benefiting employees rather than employers. More than a quarter of Enhancv’s survey respondents said that finishing their work faster than expected was the only method they used to accommodate a second job. They did not report relying on secret calendars, dedicated devices or elaborate attempts to conceal their schedules.
The honest framing isn’t that AI lets people deceive their bosses. It’s that AI is changing how much one person can realistically accomplish in eight hours, and most companies haven’t repriced the role.
What worries employers most about the trend?
The concerns are understandable. Burnout remains a possibility, even when people believe they’re managing. Two employers also create two sets of confidentiality obligations and potential conflicts of interest. Employers may worry that an employee splitting attention will disengage from both jobs, while managers of distributed teams may have fewer signals beyond completed work.
Some return-to-office mandates may partly reflect managers’ uncertainty about employee activity outside the workplace.
However, research does not necessarily support treating physical presence as a substitute for performance. The largest randomized hybrid-work study to date, led by Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom and published in Nature, followed more than 1,600 workers and found a 33% drop in resignations with no measurable effect on productivity or promotions. Companies that equate presence with performance may be measuring the wrong behavior.
Is the 40-hour workweek already over?
Secret overemployment may resemble a workplace scandal at first glance, but it could also be interpreted as an early sign of changing work patterns. The 40-hour workweek was built for an era when work often required being physically present at a machine. That assumption is now meeting a workplace in which AI tools can help some employees produce more in less time.
Notably, nearly 13% of survey respondents holding multiple jobs said no salary increase could persuade them to leave their second job. For these workers, the decision may involve more than additional income. A second role can provide protection against an uncertain labor market while occupying hours that their primary job does not require.
Companies responding to this shift may place greater emphasis on measurable outcomes instead of hours or online activity. Those that continue to rely heavily on visibility may struggle to understand how employees are dividing their time.
The real disruption may not be people secretly holding two jobs. It may be the realization that one job no longer requires 40 hours to begin with.
Sources
- Stanford News: “Study Finds Hybrid Work Benefits Companies and Employees.”
- McKinsey & Company: “The Economic Potential of Generative AI: The Next Productivity Frontier.”
- MIT Sloan: “How Generative AI Can Boost Highly Skilled Workers’ Productivity.”
- S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: “Multiple Jobholders by Industry.”
- Enhancv: “Secret Overemployment Trends Report.”
