“Gas is just through the roof. Unless it’s payday, I put in all the money I have at the time, sometimes borrowing money from family and friends,” Elliott said. “I began to realize that what I was making at Amazon was not enough to pay for gas. My biggest concern is not being able to get to work to make any money. You have to pretty much rob Peter to pay Paul.”

A tight labor market has pushed wages up across the board — but not enough to keep pace with inflation, which hit a 40-year high in June. That’s forcing workers like Elliott to seek second jobs and increase their hours to pay for their normal expenses. The percentage of employed people working multiple jobs in the United States has steadily increased since March 2020 from 4 percent in April 2020 to 4.8 percent in June 2022, according to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, although it has not returned to its pre-pandemic levels. In February 2020, 5.1 percent of workers in the United States held two or more jobs. While people taking on multiple jobs is typically a sign of a healthy job market where workers have more job opportunities available, it is also a sign of increasing financial strain on Americans’ pocketbooks…

Workers are increasingly taking on a second full-time job and clocking more than 70 hours a week to make ends meet. Although fewer people overall have multiple jobs now than before the pandemic, more workers now hold two full-time jobs, defined as more than 35 hours a week per job, than at any point since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting this data in 1994: 426,000 Americans held two full-time jobs in June, compared to 308,000 in February 2020.