Gen X Worker Makes $344K A Year With 3 Full-Time Remote Jobs And None Of The Companies Know
The logistics would be tough in a lot of fields, and it's certainly not for everyone. But in his case, it's been life-changing.
Artie Medvedev / Shutterstock We're all trying to make a bit of extra scratch nowadays, but what if the solution is actually to simply get two more full-time jobs? That's what one worker is doing, and it's changed his financial life.
The Gen X IT professional is secretly working 3 full-time remote jobs all at once.
Now don't worry, this isn't some out-of-touch 1%-er CEO giving bootstrap advice, we promise! It's a practice known as "overemployment," where workers take on multiple full-time, salaried positions and clandestinely work them all from home at the same time.
It's nothing new, but since the pandemic, the practice has skyrocketed. A 2023 survey of 1,000 professionals found that a staggering 37% were working more than one full-time job, and of those, 57% said they were considering taking on another.
Joseph, a Gen X'er who works in IT, is a perfect example of this trend. He's holding down three full-time jobs in his field while pulling down major money — and his employers are none the wiser.
Working 3 full-time jobs makes him $344,000 a year. As a result, he's paid off his mortgage and can send his kids to college debt-free.
Sounds like paradise, right? It all began in 2020, when Joseph, a 48-year-old from Texas, got a new job in IT paying $120,000 a year.
As he was about to exit his previous $117,000-a-year job, a colleague pulled him aside and asked him what would end up being a life-changing question: Why not just stay on and work both jobs?
He realized he was only doing about six hours of "real work" each week anyway — a story that is familiar to many professionals — so he decided to give it a shot.
The new job required 30-40 hours a week, so his workload was high, but with the average workday nowadays being roughly 44 hours a week, 46 is nothing extraordinary, right?
But then it began to look like he might get laid off, so he found another job paying $120,000. But to his surprise not only did the layoff never come, but his workload drastically decreased to about eight hours a week like his first job.
"Job two got so easy and was still 100% remote, so I kept it while I got job three," he told Business Insider. "I hung in there because the pay was good and I wasn't really doing anything."
So he just kept pushing. Now, he's paid off his cars and the $129,000 left on his mortgage and is saving to send his kids to college entirely out of pocket with no debt.
Photo: Mick Latter / Pexels
The overemployment trend can be life-changing, but it's not without major pitfalls — and definitely won't work in every field.
Joseph said he never intended to have multiple jobs and figured in each case it would end up not working out. But the more he waited for the day when the workload became untenable, the more it just never quite arrived.
Still, he says, both the workload and managing the logistics have left him "burned out," and he has doubts about how long he can keep the act up — a task that would be impossible in many fields. To do this you need to be in a field, like IT, with lots and lots of downtime, a luxury not every professional has.
Joseph is also worried about eventually getting caught, and recent trends show his fears aren't unfounded. Having multiple full-time jobs isn't illegal, but it's definitely not encouraged either. And as knowledge of the over-employment trend has grown, so too have suspicions and reprisals from employers who find out about it.
But for Joseph, it's worth the risk. "We were able to pay off our house, the cars, and pay cash for a car for my son," he said. "I really just want to be comfortable in our financial future."
And when it comes to the ethics and morality of overworking schemes? Well, Joseph and those doing it aren't the ones who've created an employment system in which stability is a thing of the past, and an economy so difficult to thrive in you need a $344,000 combined salary to get anywhere.
"I am salary-based, so it doesn't really matter if I work 15 hours a week or 40 hours a week," he said. "If I do the job that they hire me for, then I have earned my pay." Hard to argue with that.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.