Two 20 hour jobs is optimistic. Part-time is considered anything under 35 hours a week. It’s much more likely you’re going to be stuck trying to squeeze two 30 hour jobs into a single week because neither job is going to consider the schedule of the other and you’re going to be caught in between. And as others have said, neither jobs are going to give you the benefits a 40 hour job should be giving you, but are often screwing you out of because, in the US, pretty much nothing but cheap healthcare is guaranteed for 40 hours now.
Not to mention most jobs are gig work now. I haven’t had a full time job with benefits for years now. I am able to survive with one full time contract job, but my mental and physical health are at an all time low because I sit and work all day five days a week, including holidays if I don’t want to lose pay, even when I am sick. There’s no reason all of these gig jobs shouldn’t be full-time jobs with benefits (as well as the numerous low paying part time jobs that people worse off than me have to suffer working in multiple of them). Every time a US company needs an employee, they just hire a contractor so they can get away with not paying them benefits. I’m able to get health insurance from the contract company I’m hired under, but I have to spend around $500 a month, and that’s for me alone. Funny enough, the health insurance cost at my workplace isn’t any better, so even if I were hired, I wouldn’t pay less in insurance. I worked in jobs that paid me much less where the insurance was around a few tens of dollars a week or so.
It’s rarely two 9-5 M-F jobs that add up to 40 hours a week.
It’s usually a combination of a primary job that is just below the threshold of full time and therefore doesn’t qualify for basic benefits like health insurance, paid time off, or retirement <32 hours.
Usually the second job is in the evening and weekends. Service jobs, retail, etc. Often the schedule varies wildly and changes often.
Typically both jobs are paid hourly and can end at any time.
A lot of people work much more than 40 hours per week, but don’t have the security of a full time, salaried job.
Don’t forget, the reason those jobs are <32 hours is because they don’t want to pay benefits and benefit from your feelings of insecurity in terms of employment and wages. If you feel that, you’re more likely to do things employees who feel secure at work would balk at even if it’s as simple as taking extra shifts at a moment’s notice.
Which, by the way, outside of “the cruelty is the point” which is obviously the real reason I’ve never been able to get the logic of this
Surely part time, seasonal, temporary, or otherwise insecure jobs should pay more and have better benefits, no? As that’s the balancing factor for the insecurity?
Like, I’m in academia so talking about what I know, I feel like it’s incredibly obvious that a tenured professor should make less money than an assistant professor who should make less money than an adjunct. And yet it’s the opposite. Adjunct professors get paid a few thousand dollars a semester, when it should honestly be like a thousand dollars an hour to encourage the school to hire actual full time staff. Tenured professors basically can’t lose their jobs unless they really fuck up but they get paid the most and also get extra benefits like closer parking and shit like that.
Travel nurses are basically the only people that actually get higher pay to compensate for the precarity.
Most places don’t offer benefits under 36-40 hours, including 401k, IRA, other retirement options. Most part time jobs are lower pay. And also if you are driving 15-30 minutes to either job, that ends up being like 2 hours total drive time since we are a car congestion-centric culture. Working multiple jobs just to get by is predatory and aimed at the extremely poor people.
I never understood what is bad about “working 2 jobs”. (I don’t live in the US.) Is two 20 hour jobs not the same as one 40 hour job?
Two 20 hour jobs is optimistic. Part-time is considered anything under 35 hours a week. It’s much more likely you’re going to be stuck trying to squeeze two 30 hour jobs into a single week because neither job is going to consider the schedule of the other and you’re going to be caught in between. And as others have said, neither jobs are going to give you the benefits a 40 hour job should be giving you, but are often screwing you out of because, in the US, pretty much nothing but cheap healthcare is guaranteed for 40 hours now.
Not to mention most jobs are gig work now. I haven’t had a full time job with benefits for years now. I am able to survive with one full time contract job, but my mental and physical health are at an all time low because I sit and work all day five days a week, including holidays if I don’t want to lose pay, even when I am sick. There’s no reason all of these gig jobs shouldn’t be full-time jobs with benefits (as well as the numerous low paying part time jobs that people worse off than me have to suffer working in multiple of them). Every time a US company needs an employee, they just hire a contractor so they can get away with not paying them benefits. I’m able to get health insurance from the contract company I’m hired under, but I have to spend around $500 a month, and that’s for me alone. Funny enough, the health insurance cost at my workplace isn’t any better, so even if I were hired, I wouldn’t pay less in insurance. I worked in jobs that paid me much less where the insurance was around a few tens of dollars a week or so.
It’s rarely two 9-5 M-F jobs that add up to 40 hours a week.
It’s usually a combination of a primary job that is just below the threshold of full time and therefore doesn’t qualify for basic benefits like health insurance, paid time off, or retirement <32 hours.
Usually the second job is in the evening and weekends. Service jobs, retail, etc. Often the schedule varies wildly and changes often.
Typically both jobs are paid hourly and can end at any time.
A lot of people work much more than 40 hours per week, but don’t have the security of a full time, salaried job.
Don’t forget, the reason those jobs are <32 hours is because they don’t want to pay benefits and benefit from your feelings of insecurity in terms of employment and wages. If you feel that, you’re more likely to do things employees who feel secure at work would balk at even if it’s as simple as taking extra shifts at a moment’s notice.
Which, by the way, outside of “the cruelty is the point” which is obviously the real reason I’ve never been able to get the logic of this
Surely part time, seasonal, temporary, or otherwise insecure jobs should pay more and have better benefits, no? As that’s the balancing factor for the insecurity?
Like, I’m in academia so talking about what I know, I feel like it’s incredibly obvious that a tenured professor should make less money than an assistant professor who should make less money than an adjunct. And yet it’s the opposite. Adjunct professors get paid a few thousand dollars a semester, when it should honestly be like a thousand dollars an hour to encourage the school to hire actual full time staff. Tenured professors basically can’t lose their jobs unless they really fuck up but they get paid the most and also get extra benefits like closer parking and shit like that.
Travel nurses are basically the only people that actually get higher pay to compensate for the precarity.
Most places don’t offer benefits under 36-40 hours, including 401k, IRA, other retirement options. Most part time jobs are lower pay. And also if you are driving 15-30 minutes to either job, that ends up being like 2 hours total drive time since we are a car congestion-centric culture. Working multiple jobs just to get by is predatory and aimed at the extremely poor people.
I think there are benefits when you work a 40 hour job, which you don’t get when you work 2 20 hour jobs.
Edit, here is a random website I found that says the same
Edit 2: not to mention I think its likely that 20 hour jobs are paid worse than 40 hour
(deleted for redundancy)