Forget quiet quitting: the latest work trend is 2 or more jobs — without any bosses knowing

Like many Canadians, a woman we'll call Mary was looking for a little extra income during the pandemic, to offset the rising cost of living. But instead of turning to the traditional options of working some overtime, freelancing a little or starting up an unrelated side hustle, she and her partner took things a little further by each getting a second, full-time job in their field — without leaving their first one, or telling either boss about it.

They are not alone. Mary and her partner, who have been granted anonymity to conceal their identities, are part of a growing trend that's being called overemployment. And there's a website — overemployed.com — to help remote workers do it.

It was set up by Isaac Price who, sensing layoffs were coming in 2020, "started on my exit plan," he says of his origin story. "After months of slogging through interviews, I landed a job offer." But the layoff never came and once he realized he could juggle both jobs at once, "it dawned on me, why quit my job at all? That's when the idea was born."

In contrast to the viral office trend of "quiet quitting" that sees many workers only engaging in the bare minimum that's required of them, people who sign up for the overemployed life are moving in the opposite direction: burning the candle at as many ends as they can manage, getting multiple full-time paycheques for as long as they can pull it off.

There's a thriving community on Reddit devoted to the movement. One prominent YouTuber proudly documented his experience dabbling in it — including how it came crashing down.

Working exclusively from home is almost always key to the entire operation. Mary's partner, an engineer, was the first to dip his toe into the overemployment pool, signing up for a second full-time engineering job paying $90,000 a year back in January 2021. Mary decided to follow suit last fall by getting two jobs — one in finance, and one in accounting, each paying $60,000 a year for full-time work.

"We just looked at the budgets and we thought we definitely need this," she says of their four jobs, which doubled their household income to $300,000. That's a large income by any definition, but Mary says they need the cash to stay afloat. "It wasn't about whether we can or not ... we have to," she said.

It makes for some long hours, as Mary says they each average 12-14 hours of work every day, and some on weekends. Others online say they're able to swing it without putting in much more than 40 hours a week. And the pandemic is what made it all possible, because of the widespread acceptance of remote work.

Mary and her partner were mindful of only seeking out jobs that could be done from home for the entire time, because the day any of their bosses call them into the office, the jig is up. If and when that happens, "I would quit," she said.

Even from home, it's hard to juggle it all. She started both her jobs around the same time, and at one point was in training modules for both jobs at once.

"Often I would just have to turn off my camera [and] put my stuff on mute on one," she said. "There have been a couple of times where I've been called upon to answer something from both companies simultaneously," she said. "Then you really scramble ... it really hits you."

Exact numbers on the trend are hard to come by, but Anthony Leutenegger, a Canadian and head of business development at technology company Aragon Labs, says it's clearly a growing trend, especially in technology.

"The reason you're seeing it pop up more now is because of the remote work," he said in an interview. "You couldn't do that as easily if you were in an office."

As remote and hybrid work gets more entrenched, he says overemployment will be, too. "I think we're going to see a huge rise in over employment over the next year," he said.