After a decade of generally positive job market data (even if largely thanks to job growth among lower-wage recipients), one measure has failed to validate this narrative: multiple job holders made up 5.1% of the total employed in August, and that share of the job market has been hovering around 5% since the beginning of the “recovery” in mid-2009.

In fact, the share of multiple job holders has remained the same, even though unemployment has fallen to 3.7%, the lowest since 1969. This 3.7% figure is also less than half the level in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis. Monthly hiring gains are ahead of the pace they set in 2017, averaging over 200,000 in 2018.

However, wage inflation and pay gains have mostly been disappointing and employers have been reluctant to increase hours and job benefits. This is likely the key reason why many workers continue to work more than one job at a time. Ryan Sweet, head of monetary policy research at Moody’s told Bloomberg: 

“The labor market is not as equally tight across the country, and the pickup in worker pay hasn’t been strong enough. At the same time, by almost every metric the labor market is really strong, which means there’s a lot more opportunity for people”.

Normally, a decline in the number of multiple jobholders would mean that people are transitioning to regular job positions with normalized schedules and better benefits. But according to Sweet, these multiple job holder numbers are capturing “something more structural”. That’s a macroeconomist’s way of saying that having two jobs is becoming the new normal.

There are also a litany of indications that the labor market is tightening. Openings for jobs exceeded the number of unemployed by the most on record in July of this year. Part-timers who would prefer a full-time position have fallen to a post-recession low of 4.4 million. Those holding multiple jobs felt to 7.9 million people in August after a spike over 8 million in July, although it is that particular number that has failed to shrink demonstrably in the past decade.