Repercussions of Dual Employment

Have you ever been in the situation where you are working more than one job and wondered how it may actually be affecting you? Dual employment has been getting some light shed on it lately and for good reason. Dual employment means exactly as it sounds like. It is when you hold two jobs at the same time and you are on the payroll for each. There are some obvious and not-so-obvious issues regarding dual employment, let’s discuss.

Repercussions of Dual Employment

Dual employment can become an issue if you are dedicating too much time to each employer and not able to get the full scope of your work done in a timely manner. For example, if you are full-time employed at ABC Corporation and need to be working 40 hours a week, it would be incredibly difficult for you to even work a part-time schedule at EFG Corporation, assuming the 30-hour part-time schedule. That would mean you are working 70 hours a week, Monday through Friday. To do this without sacrificing job completeness in either employer would be a pretty big feat.

Of course, this can differ if you are working as a waitress/waiter on the weekends or freelancing in your spare time.

We are more or so talking about ensuring you are giving your full time and attention to each job that you are on a traditional payroll for. Neither employer should feel like you are neglecting your job responsibilities.

Depending on where each of the jobs is, it might even be illegal to be working both. For example, federal employees are not allowed to be on payroll for more than one federal government agency. The only cases where an exception is made is when the employee is working no more than 40 hours combined, Sunday to Saturday unless overtime is authorized. There is a formal exception request process that needs to be done if you are looking to obtain more than one federal government job, your supervisor will have to approve this as well.

When you boil it down or change your actual employment to percentages, you cannot be working over 100 percent between all places of work – assuming the 40-hour workweek and no overtime. So you cannot work 10 hours at one employer and 40 hours at another. It has to total to 40 hours.

However, there is a difference between holding two jobs that total to 40 hours (or more) called dual employment and when you hold multiple jobs (also called “appointments”) that are each less than 100 percent. Holding multiple appointments that are each less than 100 percent can be completely fine if you are working multiple part-time jobs, not for federal agencies and are able to juggle all of your job tasks.

Final Thoughts

Although the thought of earning more money can be tempting, be careful about spreading yourself too thin. Not only is it not fair to your employer since you may not be able to get all of your job tasks completed on-time, but it is not fair to yourself since you won’t have any free time to focus on yourself. If you do want to hold two jobs, be careful about who each of the jobs is for and whether or not it is fully legal. Regardless, dual employment has some definite pros and cons but if it is right for you then go for it!

Have you ever held more than one job? If so, let us know in the comments!

Check out these articles for more great reads!

• How to Budget the Easy Way
• An Honest Review of Bestow Insurance
• How to Insure A Property not Under Your Name

Gina DiMasi

Gina DiMasi is an organizational finance whiz. Gina is an avid investor, educator and aficionado of bitcoin and other modern investments. In addition to being an all around nice person, Gina has a degree in personal finance studies from Framingham State University. When she's not running numbers or blogging up a storm, Gina actively volunteers with Habitat for Humanity.