Question of the Month
From the Catherwood Library reference librarians
September 2007
PLEASE NOTE: The Reference Question of the Month is kept current only during the month for which it was written. Archived questions will not be updated, and over time may contain inaccurate information or broken web links. We provide archived questions as a service, since much of the information will remain accurate and of continued interest to the ILR community.
Question: I am interested in the concept of MOONLIGHTING. Are there sources that reveal the number of persons in the U.S. who work multiple jobs and why they do it?
Answer: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) periodically publishes information on this topic. The following publications currently speak to this issue:
The most current information is found on the
Current Population Survey (CPS) page.
- See Table 36 from Employment and Earnings for Annual Average Household Data
- and Table A-39 Monthly Household Data
The links from above will ultimately take you to the following two sets of tables --
- Multiple jobholders by selected demographic and economic characteristics [annual current information] or ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat36.txt
- Multiple jobholders by selected demographic and economic characteristics [monthly current information] or ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea39.txt
See also:
- Moonlighting across the U.S., Monthly Labor Review: The Editor's Desk, January 23, 2003
- Mutiple jobholding in 2006, Monthly Labor Review: The Editor's Desk, October 30, 2007
- Multiple jobholders in 2002, Monthly Labor Review: The Editor's Desk, January 21, 2004
- When one job is not enough, Issues in Labor Statistics, Summary 00-15, August 2000
- Reasons for working multiple jobs, Monthly Labor Review, October 2000
— Researched by Stuart Basefsky
