A new Bankrate study finds that more than one in three U.S. adults make extra money with a side gig.
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00:00Well I know you guys just put out a study at Bankrate that says more than one in three Americans
00:06are earning money through a side hustle. Break that down for us.
00:10That's right. 36% nowadays have a side hustle. Back in 2017 when we started doing this research
00:16that was only 19% so that's a big deal that this has basically doubled in the past seven years.
00:23It says a lot about the state of the economy because while we commend the extra work ethic
00:28I do worry that this has been a good job market and even in a good job market this many people
00:35feel like they need extra work to make ends meet. It's very much a story about high inflation high
00:41interest rates. We're seeing a lot of people needing to cobble together these extra income
00:48streams. They're using the money primarily for expenses. This year discretionary expenses
00:54overtook necessary expenses so that was a bit of progress from last year but there aren't that
00:59many people using this money for savings or debt payoff or investments. It tends to be more of a
01:05spending story although like I said at least this year it's more of a hey let's go on vacation and
01:10have some fun kind of thing. Last year it was more of a put food on the table and a roof over your
01:15head kind of thing. It's cooled a little bit. Last year 39% had a side hustle. This year it's 36%.
01:22The other big change was even a bigger change than those three percentage points.
01:26The bigger change was the percentage of people paying for discretionary versus necessary expenses.
01:33The discretionary crowd jumped by 10 percentage points over the past year. I take that as a good
01:40sign that it's less of a daily bill story and more of a let's drum up some extra funds to go on
01:47vacation or buy some electronics or something like that. It's not a total cushion in the sense
01:53of this is money we're putting aside for investments or retirement or a rainy day. It
01:59tends to be money that people are spending. At least this year they're spending it on more
02:04discretionary kind of items. It does stand to reason that if inflation continues to cool side
02:10hustling may continue to go down a little bit but then again we've seen some weakening in the job
02:15market. The unemployment rate has jumped from 3.4% to 4.3%. That's still pretty low historically
02:21speaking but even in a good job market a lot of people are side hustling. So you could see
02:26if layoffs were to rise maybe more people are full-time freelancing or full-time gig working.