More New Zealanders have been working multiple jobs, in an attempt to cover everyday living costs.
Employment Hero’s latest Annual Jobs Report found 33% of people have more than one role, the second highest globally after Australia at 34%.
Beyond poly-employment, many were also clocking up extra hours, with 43% of people saying they work overtime.
Thirty per cent of New Zealanders said they were working more than one job simply to earn enough money.
The report was based on real-time aggregated and anonymised data from more than 2.5 million employees and 350,000-plus businesses globally.
Country manager Neil Webster said the upwards trend of more people taking part-time or casual employment, and having multiple roles, could be down to demand and supply.
“It is harder to survive on a part-time job than it was before, but it’s also an indication that employers’ confidence in hiring maybe isn’t quite where it should be either,” he said.
“So they’re willing to commit to providing casual employment which is sort of easier to scale up and scale down.
“If you don’t have a lot of confidence in the business in taking on full-time employees, you might resort to kind of employing people on a casual basis, which is a lot more flexible.
“But as I said, it’s less secure. If you can’t get the hours that you need to sustain yourself, you have to take another job,” he said.
The recruitment company’s report also found it was not just a young person’s issue, with one in five of those aged 55-plus working multiple jobs for financial reasons, while nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds (47%) were doing so.
“I guess some of that will be driven by lifestyle choices, you know, people wanting to maybe have not a full-time gig as they kind of wind into retirement,” Webster said.
“But some of it is maybe not by choice and simply a fact of what it is that they can find out there in the market, with it being harder and harder for older people to get secure full-time roles.
“So, we think there’s a bit of both happening there, but it’s definitely, again, an interesting trend in terms of things to manage.”
Webster said this could have a knock-on effect for smaller and medium-sized businesses.
“We talk to SME owners every day who feel the impact of poly-employment. More and more we’re hearing employees are exhausted,” he said.
“This is where productivity takes a hit and businesses are left carrying the weight. When people are working nights and weekends just to keep up with the cost of living, it’s not sustainable.
“For policymakers, cost-of-living support and SME-focused initiatives need to be front of mind. For businesses, the responsibility is to put real, accessible support in place for staff.”
Webster said it was important employees had access to Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs) as having multiple commitments could cause stress, burnout and deteriorating wellbeing.
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