Nearly a third of Americans have picked up a side hustle, and more than half of them say they did it for the most basic reason imaginable: to pay their bills. Not to fund a vacation. Not to build a startup. To keep the lights on.
That is the picture painted by a batch of new survey data from Omnisend, ZipRecruiter, Bankrate, and BestBrokers, compiled by USA TODAY. The numbers tell a story of an economy where a single paycheck no longer stretches far enough, and where millions of working Americans are improvising their way through rising prices and a soft job market.
Omnisend found that 28 percent of Americans have taken on a side hustle. ZipRecruiter puts the figure even higher, at 35 percent. Nearly half of those side hustlers, 49 percent, started within the past year alone. Whatever is squeezing household budgets, it is squeezing harder and faster.
The top motivation is blunt. Omnisend found about 54 percent of side hustlers said they picked up extra work "to earn extra money for bills or essentials." That is not ambition talking. That is necessity.
But bills are only part of it. ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud pointed to a deeper anxiety, the fear of losing a primary job in a market that offered historically weak growth in 2025.
"The market sitting the way it did for the last year, I think a lot of people were saying, 'If I were to lose my job right now, it would be really hard to find something else.'"
Bachaud added that side work has become a hedge against uncertainty.
"Adding something on the side is just really to prepare themselves for the 'what if' environment."
That "what if" environment is a polite way of describing a labor market where, outside a few resilient sectors, workers feel exposed. When your main income feels fragile, a second income stream stops being optional. It becomes insurance.
Here is a detail that complicates the narrative: the people most likely to have side hustles are not the ones struggling the most. ZipRecruiter found that about 45 percent of Americans earning more than $150,000 a year do supplemental work. Among workers earning less than $25,000, the figure drops to 31 percent. The same 31 percent holds for those making between $25,000 and $50,000.
Kory Kantenga, head of economics for the Americas at LinkedIn, offered a candid explanation.
"It's the old adage: The more money you have, the easier it is to make money."
Kantenga cited AI consulting as an example. An engineer already working in artificial intelligence can pick up lucrative side projects with minimal friction. A warehouse worker or cashier has no such runway.
"For example, you today are an AI engineer and you're working for a company. There's a lot of AI consulting work there available to you. It's just sitting there waiting for the taking."
The implication is worth sitting with. The side-hustle economy rewards people who already have marketable, high-demand skills. For lower earners, the ones who need extra cash the most, the available gigs tend to pay less and demand more physical effort.
Bankrate's survey found that younger Americans lead the way: 34 percent of Gen Z and 31 percent of millennials have sought out a side hustle. Gen X trails at 23 percent, with baby boomers close behind at 22 percent.
That tracks. Younger workers entered the labor force during or after the pandemic, when inflation ate into starting salaries and remote work opened new avenues for freelancing. They also carry student debt loads that older generations largely did not face at the same age.
The most popular side hustle is selling or reselling products online. Omnisend found 46 percent of side hustlers do it, hawking goods on eBay, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, and similar platforms. Freelance work accounts for 31 percent, and social media content creation or blogging covers another 21 percent.
Greg Zakowicz, an ecommerce advisor to Omnisend, said the resale boom reflects a broader pullback in consumer spending.
"People are going out less, especially if they have less money. They're wearing their clothes less, wearing their shoes less, it's easier to resell this stuff."
Zakowicz framed the mentality bluntly.
"How do I get the money for the least amount of effort?"
That is not laziness. That is efficiency under pressure. When you are already working a full-time job and trying to cover rising grocery and utility bills, the side hustle that demands the least additional time wins. Listing old shoes on Facebook Marketplace beats driving for a delivery app at midnight.
BestBrokers used income data from Upwork to rank popular side hustles by profitability and career potential. The results show a wide spread.
Life coaching tops the list at $150 per hour on average, though BestBrokers noted that "demand depends heavily on personal brand and reputation." In other words, the hourly rate is high, but the barrier to entry is steep and the client pipeline is uncertain.
Below that tier, content creators working for brands average $40 per hour. Affiliate marketers pull in about $37.50. E-commerce freelancers, photographers, T-shirt designers, influencer marketing freelancers, copywriters, and tutors all average upward of $30 per hour.
Further down the scale, photo editors, proofreaders, Canva designers, blog writers, and digital artists earn upward of $20 per hour on average.
Those hourly rates look decent on paper. But they do not account for the unpaid hours spent finding clients, marketing services, managing invoices, and dealing with platform fees. Whether the income figures Omnisend and BestBrokers report are gross or net of expenses is unclear from the available data, a gap worth noting before anyone quits a day job.
Omnisend broke down monthly income by side-hustle type. About 39 percent of e-commerce side hustlers said they make more than $1,000 each month. For freelancers, that figure drops to 28 percent. Food delivery workers come in at 26 percent. Content creators trail at 19 percent.
Flip those numbers and the picture gets sobering. If only 39 percent of the most popular side-hustle category clears $1,000 a month, the majority are earning less, sometimes far less. For content creators, more than four out of five are not hitting that threshold.
A thousand dollars a month is meaningful. It can cover a car payment, a utility bill, or a chunk of rent. But it is not transformative income, and the time cost of earning it on top of a primary job is real.
The side-hustle trend started booming after the pandemic, when inflation surged and remote work gave employees back commuting time they could redirect into extra income. Years later, prices are climbing again, and the hustle has not stopped. It has accelerated.
Zakowicz offered a note of caution for anyone jumping in.
"The thing people don't realize is you've got to look at that next step ahead. That next step might be a cliff, and you got to be willing to pack a parachute."
He is right. Side hustles carry risks that rarely make the headline. Tax obligations catch people off guard. Platform algorithms change overnight and crater a seller's visibility. Freelance clients disappear. And burnout, the quiet cost of working two jobs indefinitely, does not show up in any survey.
Strip away the upbeat "hustle culture" framing and the data tells a harder story. When more than half of side hustlers say they are doing it to cover essentials, that is not entrepreneurial energy. That is an economy where wages have not kept pace with the cost of living.
When nearly half of all side hustlers started within the past year, that is not a slow cultural shift. That is a rapid response to worsening conditions.
And when the highest earners are the most likely to have side hustles, and the most likely to profit from them, the gap between those who can capitalize on the gig economy and those who are ground down by it only widens.
Americans have always been resourceful. They will find a way to make ends meet. But a country where one in three workers needs a second income stream just to pay the electric bill is not a country where the economy is working for ordinary people. It is a country where ordinary people are working around an economy that has failed them.