Will we see fewer people working more jobs or

More people working more jobs?

Are people working more jobs to make ends meet? We have seen months of increases in the number of people working two part-time jobs. These increases have meant that most months this year we have set records for either the number of people working multiple jobs or record levels of people working multiple part-time jobs. Sometimes the peak month is October. Some times the peak month is December.

The Trend is Up. We had 1.7 million people working two part-time jobs during October of 2007. That was before the numbers fell. We saw a similar peak, this time October of 2014 when we hit 2.17 million people working two part-time jobs. This past month we had 2.11 million dual part-time job workers. WE are already ahead of the 2015 peak of 2.067 million people working two part-time jobs. That mark was set last December.  It is fairly certain that the number of part-time workers will increase  be recorded as having  increased during the month of November. It is also almost a certainty that some of those people will be working two part-time jobs.

We are nearing a Nine Year Record High Level of People working a Full-time job and a secondary part-time job. We had over 4.1 Million workers working a primary full-time job and a secondary part-time job during October. This could be the peak for 2016 or we could see a peak during December or we could have seen the peak during October.

We should see over 500,000 Part-time Jobs created and up to one million Full-time Jobs lost during November. The forecast article, linked in the "Trend is up" paragraph, projected that there would be more full-time jobs lost than part-time jobs gained recorded in the Jobs Report. It was also projected that real, unadjusted, unemployment could drop during November. This is because some of the full-time jobs lost are probably seasonal jobs.

If we see a drop in dual job workers and an increase in part-time jobs we might be able to see an increase in the participation rate. The question is quality or quantity? Some years we see more full-time jobs lost than there are part-time jobs gained during the month of November. This would result in a net job loss and a drop in the participation rate. 

Friday's report will be interesting. The next few days after that will allow for a deeper analysis into the numbers including the multiple job holders number. Was October the high water mark for dual job workers during 2016? Will it be November? Will it be December? The trend is up.

It's the economy.