oa Meerdere banen: noodzaak of uitdaging?

Multiple jobs, necessity or challenge?Summary

In 2007 7% of the employees in the Netherlands have more than one paid job. This percentage has been increasing over the past decade. We feel that employees with a second job should be included in debates on flexible work. In international research two hypotheses have been developed to explain the second jobs phenomenon: the ‘hours constraint’ hypothesis and the ‘heterogeneous jobs’ hypothesis. In this article we use data from the Netherlands Working Conditions Survey 2007 (NWCS) to test these hypotheses.The first hypothesis, the hours constraint hypothesis, is partly confirmed for Dutch employees. The heterogeneous jobs hypothesis is fully rejected. Having more than one job is therefore considered more a necessity than a challenge. However, a lack of suitable data on second and third jobs might be one of the reasons for the rejection of the heterogeneous jobs hypothesis.For future research we suggest collecting and analyzing data on employees’ second jobs in order to find out what factors influence employees choice for a second job. Also we suggest analyzing whether or not taking up a second job is a way for employees to improve their general labor market position or a stepping stone for entrepreneurship.