When one job isn't enough: the psychology of living with two jobs

“No, I can’t on Saturday. I’ve got … some work.”

Many people say this sentence with a slight hesitation. Not because the second job is a secret, but because it is hard to explain in one sentence without feeling as though you are apologising. The friend inviting you on a trip doesn’t know that on Friday evening you finished at the office, then sat until eleven doing the accounts for a client you help out “on the side”, and that Saturday is the only day you can finish what you didn’t manage during the week. They don’t even know that you would rather not be doing it. Or that you would, just not this much of it.

Two jobs are more common in Slovenia than they first appear, because they hide under different names: a part-time sole-trader business on the side, copyright and service contracts, supplementary work, private tutoring, weekend shifts in a bar or restaurant, translating at night. Some people choose a second job because they enjoy it. Many because one salary doesn’t cover the rent, the mortgage or the children. And a great many are somewhere in between. In this article I won’t judge whether it is right to have two jobs. I’m interested in something else: what happens to you and to the people around you when you live in two work systems at once.

How many of us there are, and why we hardly talk about it

In the United States, where this is measured most systematically, labour statistics have shown for decades that around five per cent of employed people hold more than one job. In the European Union, Eurostat data put the share at a similar level, just a few per cent. At first glance that is not much. But researchers in the field point out that official figures probably miss many of those who work on contracts, through platforms or informally for relatives alongside a regular job. And, more importantly for us: even when they are counted, we know very little about how they experience it.

In 2014 the psychologists Michael Sliter and Elizabeth Boyd wrote that holding multiple jobs is a “neglected topic” in organisational research: most studies assume that a person has one workplace, one manager, one team. A review by Emily Campion, Brianna Caza and Sherry Moss in 2020 then gathered what is known and showed that the consequences vary widely — from exhaustion to a greater sense of meaning. It depends above all on why someone works two jobs and how much choice they have in the matter.

It is rarely talked about in everyday life, too. People who work two jobs for money often stay quiet about it because they feel ashamed. People who work two jobs because they love it stay quiet because they fear they will look insufficiently committed at their main job. The result is a large group of people living very similar lives, each of whom thinks they are alone in it.

A workplace is a system — and you are in two

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we look at the family as a system: a group of people with their own roles, unwritten rules, alliances and tensions, who respond to every change in any one member. You can read more about this in the knowledge base under the family as a system. A workplace works in much the same way. A team also has its rules about who stays late, who speaks up in meetings, who comes to the end-of-year party and who is “one of us”.

When you have two jobs, you are not simply twice as busy. You are a member of two systems that mostly don’t know about each other — or do know, and quietly take note. At your first job you may be the one who always leaves at four on the dot and never shows up to the informal get-togethers. At your second, you are the one who only answers after six and can’t be asked for anything in the morning. In both, you are a little on the edge. And people on the edge of a system often end up with a role they didn’t choose: “the one who doesn’t care as much”, “the one who is only here for the money”, “the one you can’t count on”.

The third system, the one least talked about, is home. There, too, you are someone. And there, too, your absence gets redistributed somehow: someone takes on more, someone learns not to ask you, a child learns that Dad is “at work” on Saturdays, a partner learns that planning the weekend is her job.

Tiredness you can’t sleep off

The most obvious consequence of two jobs is tiredness. But it isn’t just one kind. The first is simple: there aren’t enough hours. When work takes twelve hours a day, something has to shrink, and for most people sleep shrinks first. Not because they underestimate it, but because it is the only thing that doesn’t complain out loud.

The second kind of tiredness is less visible. In 2000 Blake Ashforth and colleagues described how every shift from one role to another — from employee to parent, from parent to partner — takes a small effort: putting down one identity and picking up another. When you work two jobs, these transitions don’t happen a few times a day, but many times. Between the two jobs there is often no transition at all, only a commute: in the car or on the bus you are already answering messages from the second client while your head is still in the last meeting of the first job.

The body registers this, even if your mind says “it’s fine”. When tension lasts for months with no time to settle, we speak of chronic stress. It isn’t dramatic. It is quiet and steady, and it shows up as irritability, Sunday headaches, a sense that you never really rest. If you recognise several of the signs, read Burnout is not laziness: signs your nervous system is asking for a break. I write about something similar, from the angle of a schedule set by others, in Shift work: what it does to your body and your relationships at home.

The shame nobody talks about

People who work two jobs often carry one of two kinds of shame — sometimes both.

The first is shame about money. “At my age I should be living on one salary.” “Other people manage, and I can’t.” This shame hides behind jokes (“I’m just a workaholic”) or behind silence. You don’t ask for help, you don’t say why you can’t come, you don’t even admit to your partner how much is left at the end of the month. In the background there is often an old family story: in which house money was never discussed, who was “the one who can’t manage”, what it meant to ask.

The second is shame about disloyalty. It shows up in people who do the second job for pleasure or for their career. They feel they are betraying their first team, that they ought to be “fully here”. In meetings they feel everyone is looking at them and knows. They don’t put forward an idea in case someone thinks their mind is already elsewhere.

Shame has a way of cutting people off from others precisely when they need them most. I have written about how to tell it apart from guilt in Guilt and shame are not the same — and the difference matters, and you will also find a short explanation under shame. Here I would add just one thing: when shame retreats into silence, others start carrying it too. Your partner guesses why you are absent. Your colleagues guess why you avoid them. And the guesses are almost always worse than the truth.

What happens at home

In the 1980s the sociologist Arlie Hochschild described “the second shift” — the housework and care that awaits working parents, mostly women, after their paid job. For people with two jobs this is often already a third shift. And in a couple it doesn’t divide itself fairly on its own.

From a systemic point of view, something quiet often happens in such families: the person working two jobs gradually becomes a guest in their own home. Not out of indifference, but because they are not there. The family reorganises around their absence — decisions are made without them, the children take their questions to the other parent, the partner builds a rhythm of their own. When they come back, they feel they are in the way. And the partner feels they are carrying everything alone.

Money often gets tangled up in this as well. When someone works two jobs to cover shared costs, a silent ledger can form in the couple: “I’m slaving away for both of us, and you …” or “You’re always at work, and I’m left alone with everything.” Both are right. I have written about how earnings affect power in a relationship in Money and power in a couple: when one partner earns most.

Here is a short scene (composite, not a real person) that repeats itself, in different versions, in many couples:

“You’re going again? It’s Sunday.”
“I know. Just two hours. I promised it would be done by Monday.”
“It’s always just two hours.”
“What am I supposed to do? You know why I’m doing this.”
“I know. But you never ask me what it’s like for me when you’re not here.”
Silence. “You’re right. I don’t ask. Because I’m afraid of what you’ll say.”

Something important happens in this short exchange. The argument isn’t really about two hours, but about the fact that nobody talks about the cost of the second job. She doesn’t feel heard; he is afraid he will hear that he isn’t enough. Once that is said, the argument can turn into a conversation.

Time that is no longer yours

With two jobs, time isn’t only shorter. It becomes fragmented. There are no longer longer stretches in which something can happen by itself — a long conversation, an aimless walk, the afternoon when a child finally opens up. What’s left are fragments: twenty minutes here, half an hour there, all of it already shadowed by the next obligation.

This has consequences for relationships that aren’t easy to notice. Friendships don’t end with a quarrel; they empty out because nobody tends them. Hobbies don’t vanish all at once; they get postponed “until summer”. And gradually you start to wonder who you are when you are not at work — because there is hardly any of that left.

If it feels as though there is simply no room for any kind of care for yourself, you might read “I have no time for therapy”: what it looks like with a job, children and one free evening. Not to add yet another obligation, but because the people with the least time are often the ones who most need a space where they don’t have to justify it.

There is one more thing that matters with fragmented time: uncertainty. Many people work two jobs precisely because one job isn’t secure — a fixed-term contract, a project that may end, a client who may leave. The second job is then insurance. But insurance that has to be paid for every day in tiredness. I have written about what permanent temporariness does to a sense of security in Job insecurity: what permanent temporariness does to your sense of safety.

When two jobs are not a problem

It wouldn’t be fair to end this article as though two jobs are always a burden. They aren’t.

In 2018 Brianna Caza and her colleagues studied people who deliberately build several work identities at once — a teacher who is also a musician, say, or a lawyer who runs a small workshop. They found that many of them initially experience tension and a sense of being “fake” in both roles. Over time, however, some develop a way of connecting the roles so that they don’t exclude but complement each other. At that point the second job is no longer an escape or an add-on, but part of who they are.

A second job can also protect against something people rarely notice: having your whole worth depend on a single workplace. Someone with only one job who experiences injustice or redundancy there often loses the ground beneath their feet. Someone with two still has another place where they are somebody.

The difference between when two jobs enrich you and when they drain you isn’t in the number of hours. It lies in choice, in the horizon (whether you know how long it will last) and in whether you have rest somewhere that neither job can claim for itself.

Exercise: a map of three systems

This exercise takes about twenty minutes. You need a sheet of paper and a little quiet — perhaps the very twenty minutes you would otherwise spend on messages for your second job.

1. Draw three circles: first job, second job, home. Let their size show how much space each takes up in your week — not how much it should, but how much it really does.
2. In each circle, write what that system expects of you and what role you have in it. Not only the official one (“accountant”), but also the unofficial one (“the one who always leaves first”, “the one who isn’t there on Saturdays”).
3. Find the places where the circles touch or overlap. Where does one job spill into the other? Where does work spill into home? Mark these points in a different colour.
4. Outside all three circles, draw a small circle for yourself. What is in it? If it is empty, that is not an accusation — it is information. Write down one thing that would belong there and how much time a week it would need.
5. Choose one conversation you could have this week: with your partner about what it is like for them when you are not there; with your manager about what they really need from you; with yourself about how long this arrangement makes sense. One conversation, not all of them at once.

The map isn’t meant to make you ashamed of how much work you have. It is meant to let you see the whole picture, which none of the three systems can see. Only once you see it can you talk about it.

Where the answer isn’t in therapy

It is important to say what psychotherapy can’t solve. If you work two jobs because one salary doesn’t cover basic costs, the problem isn’t in your head, and talking won’t make it go away. Talking can help you stop carrying the burden alone and in shame, help you as a couple find a fairer division, or help you decide what is worth changing. But it can’t raise your pay or lower your rent.

Nor can I advise on legal questions. An employment contract may contain restrictions on working elsewhere, and different rules apply to different forms of work on the side. If you don’t know what you are allowed to do, ask a trade union, a lawyer or an accountant — people who know the field.

And finally: when tiredness turns into hopelessness, when you can no longer make yourself get up in the morning, when you lose pleasure in everything or when thoughts appear that it would be easier if you weren’t here, it is time to see your GP. If thoughts of death are strong or feel out of your control, in Slovenia you can call the Crisis Line (Klic v duševni stiski) on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 pm to 7 am) or the Samaritan helpline (Zaupni telefon Samarijan) on 116 123 (24 hours a day). In an emergency, call 112.

How a systemic view helps

When people with two jobs come to a therapist, they often expect tips on managing their time better. There are plenty of those online. A relational view is more interested in what is happening between people: who in the family carries what you can’t, which old rules keep repeating (“in our house nobody ever rested”, “a man provides money, not feelings”), why it is so hard to say “no” to one more client.

Christian Gostečnik describes how people in adult relationships unconsciously repeat the emotional atmospheres they knew at home. Someone who grew up with parents who worked non-stop and never spoke of tiredness may experience hard work as love — and rest as selfishness. Once they recognise this, the question “can I manage two jobs?” often turns into another one: “Who am I proving that I can manage?”

If you feel you would like to talk about this as a couple, it can be a good theme for a joint session. Sometimes it is enough for both of you to hear what the second job means to the other — security for one, loneliness for the other.

What to remember

• Two jobs mean living in three systems — the first job, the second job and home — none of which sees the whole picture.
• Tiredness isn’t only a lack of sleep, but also the cost of countless transitions between roles.
• Shame — about money or about “disloyalty” — leads to silence, and silence leads to guesswork at home and at work.
• Two jobs can also enrich you: when you have choice, a horizon, and rest that no job can claim.
• Therapy won’t raise your pay, but it can help you stop carrying the burden alone and help you and your partner talk about it.