Single and multiple job holders: comparative study of working hours and earnings

This research contributes to the existing knowledge on the multiple job holding (MJH) phenomenon, studying individuals working at more than one job. The study provides a better understanding of the selected labour-market-related outcomes (working hours usually worked per week and earnings per year after taxes transformed into a logarithmic form) of the single job holders (SJHs) and multiple job holders (MJHs). Our findings based on the extensive data from the annual Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) show that the weekly working hours of MJHs are slightly lower than those of SJHs and that we do not observe any statistically significant differences between both groups when it comes to the earnings. This contradicts some of the earlier observations in the literature and illustrates that the variety of motivations and reasons for becoming MJHs is much more diverse and does not stand only for the economic ones. By studying the selected labour market outcomes, we provide relevant information that could be of interest to European Human Resources (HR) departments of business organizations and employees themselves, including MJHs. The article also provides several recommendations for future research.