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Imagine earning two, three, or even four full-time salaries simultaneously — and never telling a soul. This is the world of overemployment, a growing trend born from the pandemic’s shift to remote work.
While some hail it as a justifiable new career format, others see it as a breach of workplace ethics.
In the wake of remote work’s flexibility, overemployment has emerged. Initially seen as a pandemic anomaly, it has persisted, fuelled by stagnating wages, rising living costs, and shifting attitudes about work. Yet despite its prevalence, overemployment often sits in the shadows, dismissed as a workplace taboo.
Is this model of work inherently unethical, or does it reveal deeper flaws in the way we value labour? To fully assess whether overemployment is ethical, it's important to first understand what it entails, how it functions, and why it has emerged as a compelling proposition for many in today’s workforce.
Overemployment is the practice of holding multiple full-time jobs simultaneously, typically without the employer’s knowledge. Unlike moonlighting, which often involves balancing a primary job with a smaller side gig, overemployment is when a person uses remote work arrangements to undertake more than one full time role, with multiple employers.
The /Overemployed subreddit — home to nearly 400,000 members — offers a window into this world, sharing tips, success stories, and cautionary tales from those caught out. Members commonly refer to their roles as J1, J2, and beyond. Some have as many as five.
Overemployment can be achieved via three key strategies:
We’ve all worked with someone who excels at their work, completing tasks in a fraction of the time expected. In traditional settings, this efficiency might lead to additional responsibilities or a promotion. Overemployed workers, however, redirect their extra capacity into an additional job — or jobs — effectively multiplying their income vs the comparatively meagre increase to pay they might otherwise have received.
A more controversial approach involves using tactics to minimise workload or delay deliverables. These might include deploying mouse jigglers, feigning IT issues or deliberately slow rolling work to set a low bar. While this method is dubious, it is a common method of discussion in online overemployment communities.
Some undertake overemployment by just doing all roles fully and deftly managing overlapping commitments. This approach pushes the boundaries by maintaining two or more full-time positions and working lengthened hours or juggling responsibility in order to accommodate the full requirements of each.
Some might even combine these strategies to sustain their overemployment arrangements.
This evolution of overemployment stems from the unique flexibility of remote work, which allows skilled professionals to manage overlapping responsibilities without needing to be physically present in multiple locations. Additionally, asynchronous work environments and a preference for roles with minimal managerial oversight (i.e. individual contributor roles) further enable overemployment to be achieved.
Critical to the question of ethics, is why overemployment has emerged. There have been profound shifts in the labour market over the past five years, from the onset of the pandemic to the present, these changes have reshaped how employees view work.
The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a mass shift to remote work, laying the groundwork for employees to manage multiple full-time roles undetected. For the first time, knowledge workers found themselves untethered from physical offices, enabling them to juggle multiple responsibilities across different employers.
At the same time, demand for skilled professionals in industries like tech, soared. Employers, desperate to fill roles, created an environment ripe for skilled professionals to adopt more than one role.
The pandemic also exposed the fragility of traditional employment relationships. Initial waves of mass layoffs, driven by border closures and recession fears, eroded trust between people and their employers. When the economy rebounded, a hiring spree followed — but it was short-lived. Companies that had once scrambled to onboard talent soon reversed course with widespread layoffs, reinforcing the perception that employees are expendable — the employment relationship being further transactionalised.
This shift has left many workers feeling disillusioned. Lifelong tenure, once a cornerstone of the employment contract, has become a relic of the past. People now firmly prioritise their own interests, no longer viewing jobs as relational.
Economic instability has further driven overemployment. Wage growth has lagged behind inflation, leaving many struggling to maintain their standard of living, or to even achieve a standard that exceeds that of their parents. Meanwhile, corporate profits have soared, creating a stark contrast between employer vs employee financial well-being. For some, overemployment offers a way to hedge against economic uncertainty. By diversifying their income streams, workers can achieve financial security and even pursue early retirement.
Beyond financial necessity, overemployment reflects a broader trend toward worker autonomy. Increasingly, professionals are embracing solopreneurship, fractional roles, and other nontraditional arrangements like the gig-economy. These shifts underscore a growing desire for flexibility and control over individual career trajectory — values that overemployment embodies.
As much as I enjoy reading about the exploits of those who are overemployed, I keep coming back to this strange sentiment that it both is and isn’t ethical.
On the one hand, overemployment is symptomatic of the system correcting, with the disadvantaged lashing out, gorging on jobs (and salaries) like employers have the capability of their people (without fairly sharing the fruits of that labour). On the other, there’s a contract that often clearly states what someone should be doing with their allotted hours per week. So I wanted to explore the various ways in which overemployment does, or doesn’t, appear ethical.
Ethics can be hard to gauge. The Centre for Applied Ethics defines it as “well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues”.
So does holding multiple full-time jobs violate ethical standards, or is it a justified change to the existing labour dynamic? Consider the following.
Most employment relationships function on a simple exchange of X salary for Y hours of work. This comes with an expectation that employees will devote their full attention to the role for those hours, no matter the value they produce. I probably don’t need to tell you that the ‘40-hour week’ was something that came about in the 1930’s, when the dominant industry was procedural based work (manufacturing etc.). In this context, it was very hard for two people doing the same role to deliver vastly different outputs. Fast forward to today, with knowledge work now dominant, and we’re dealing with concepts like the 10x engineer. The value generated by two peers can be, and often is, vastly different. So in a world where two people doing the same role on a similar salary will likely produce disproportionate value, is it fair to base their salary on 40 hours vs the output of their work? Should companies simply absorb a person’s ability to generate surplus value, with no comparable improvement to the value they receive via their salary? Clearly, some think not, and that the additional capacity of those excellent people can and should go towards a whole other role, in exchange for a whole other salary.
What about the other way around, where an employer deems the tasks of a job to be worth $100,000 a year, but the person they hire can deliver those tasks in less than a year (on average). Is it reasonable to expect the employee to take on more responsibility to fill those hours, for the same money, if it remains within 40 hours? Again, clearly some think not, and decide to deploy that surplus capacity to a whole other role, for a whole other salary.
In these two cases, there’s a mismatch between the value of the work produced and the value paid to deliver it. This comes back to how we define and value work — and it’s clear that 40 hours is a lazy definition. With corporate profits outpacing salaries, should this surplus value translate into additional pay, reduced working hours, or other benefits that align more equitably with modern work realities?
There are many other what-if scenarios that give seemingly fringe or full justification to a concept like overemployment:
Ok, those all felt like votes in the favour of overemployment, let’s take a look at the ones against.
Overemployment can be seen as a symptom of organisational inefficiency, where companies fail to fully utilise the capacity of their employees in pursuit of their goals. When people have excess bandwidth that goes unrecognised, uncompensated and therefore unutilised, it reflects a missed opportunity for organisations to harness their skills more effectively. I’m no economist, but no doubt this could have drastic effects on a large scale. Poor hiring and talent management processes can result in great people going undetected (and leaving), while also failing to address those who are doing nothing and remaining. Will it outright kill companies? I don’t know. But it certainly won’t help them be as successful as possible — without passing judgement on what they do with that success.
As someone who has come from the People & Culture profession, the secrecy inherent in overemployment raises questions about trust. Concealing additional commitments introduces an element of deceit that can erode trust and raise concerns about other self-serving behaviors, such as misusing company resources or prioritising personal gain over organisational goals. This erosion of trust may prompt employers to implement stricter policies or increased surveillance, further straining workplace dynamics and challenging the balance that underpins effective employment relationships. Again, mouse jigglers.
While individual contributors (IC) may find it easier to manage multiple jobs, managerial roles may pose additional ethical burdens. Managers are typically required to engage extensively with teams and contribute to the organisation’s culture. Divided attention in these roles could undermine their ability to lead effectively, which begs the question of whether overemployment is inherently incompatible with managerial responsibilities?
Here’s a few other ethical considerations that might counter overemployment:
The ethical questions surrounding overemployment are many. Whether viewed as a reflection of individual ingenuity, a symptom of organisational inefficiency, or a potential disruptor of workplace trust, overemployment challenges deeply held notions of loyalty, fairness, and productivity. But is there a world in which overemployment, or its traits become normalised?
It’s obvious there are cracks (or maybe fissures) emerging in the traditional employment model.
I’m a business owner, but I’ve also been an employee, so I think I can see both sides of this. I can’t help but think my initial response to finding out one of my employees was overemployed would be of mortification. But then I can’t help but think that merely not knowing and otherwise being happy with their output means I’m getting the value I expected for the value I pay. Is it reasonable to think I should therefore be getting more value from that person just because they’re capable of it in the time I’m “renting” them.
So, do I think overemployment is ethical? I still don’t know. I actually thought writing this article would help crystalise my opinion on the matter and give me a clearer position. I see the for and against. I understand why people feel they need to do this to earn more money, given today's financial climate. I see why people might feel better rewarded by taking on another job than they do by the pay-rise accompanying a promotion. I see how overemployment can be parasitically taking advantage of unwitting employers. But then I also think employers should have better talent management practices in place to ensure they get what they expect from their people, for the salary they provide. There are pros and cons of both. Maybe the answer, like all good HR-related questions, is; it depends.
Do I think overemployment will become a mainstay? No I don’t. Not anytime in the near future anyway. I see tenets of overemployment growing in prevalence, but through more widely adopted means such as fractional or consulting arrangements. I think the environment we’re in, of diminished loyalty and stagnant wages, will see more people enter these forms of work. Possibly, in this format, we see the positive elements of overemployment, people being paid what they’re worth, having income security through multiple jobs etc. On the employer side they get more certainty in outcome for the value, vs merely renting someone's capability for whatever it is they can achieve in that timeframe. That seems more likely and sustainable.
Overemployment may ultimately accelerate an ongoing evolution of employment norms, but I don’t think it will emerge as a common form of work. Especially not in the near future, with rising return to office (or the continued publicising of it), and growing unemployment — my bet is that it will remain as something that a niche few professionals benefit from.
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