‘Secret overemployment’ rises as workers seek financial security – Enhancv

A growing number of professionals are turning to ‘secret overemployment’ as a form of self-funded job security, according to research from Enhancv.

The study, titled ‘Why Secret Overemployment Is the New Standard for Job Security’, found that nearly 80% of professionals now see holding multiple full-time roles not as a side hustle, but as a necessary safeguard against an increasingly volatile labour market.

This shift reflects declining confidence in single-employer stability, with workers effectively ‘air-gapping’ their income streams and treating employment more like a diversified portfolio.

According to the data, 79.5% of respondents viewed a second job as essential financial security, functioning as a form of private unemployment insurance.

While overemployment has often been associated with fully remote roles, the research revealed that 50.4% of those holding multiple jobs are primarily office-based, with a further 26.5% working hybrid.

This challenges assumptions that return-to-office policies would limit the practice.

There has also been a notable shift in where overemployment is most common.

Rather than being concentrated in software engineering, which accounted for just 2.3% of respondents, the trend was also prevalent across sectors such as education (16.6%), operations (12.9%) and healthcare (11%).