‘I don’t care anymore’: Workers prefer juggling multiple part-time jobs rather than a full-time one — how ‘the Great Exhaustion’ is fuelling a new way of working

“The job market is so bad that people aren’t even going back to full-time work anymore,” she says in a TikTok video. “They’re actually making more money doing multiple part-time jobs than picking one full-time job, and getting underpaid and overworked.”

Over 2,000 commenters chimed in, most of whom agreed with her.

“A friend of mine with a PhD is cleaning houses,” one commenter writes. “She just puts in her headphones and does chores because it’s more fulfilling than the toxic academic job market.”

But this trend is about more than just spiritual fulfillment — and it may not be a fad either.

The Great Exhaustion

Bella points out that many job hunters are “over” the lengthy process of job hunting.

“It’s the endless interviews, it’s the endless rejection,” she says. “It gets really tiring after a while.”

Workers are certainly staying out of work for longer these days — data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows Americans remain unemployed for an average of 21.4 weeks (5.35 months), as of April. Bella says that she’s heard of many people who’ve been searching for a job for six months or a year — despite the unemployment rate remaining low at 3.9%.

But the job search isn’t the biggest hurdle of landing a new gig, write many of the commenters on Bella’s video. Many are simply done with work as we know it.

“I’d rather just have 2 part time jobs that don’t require much from me,” one commenter says. Another says they walk dogs, teach yoga and clean Airbnbs, allowing them to create the life they “love.”

Workplace trend writer and computer science professor Cal Newport coined a term for this phenomenon in an article he wrote for The New Yorker last December: the Great Exhaustion. Newport writes that the Great Exhaustion is the overwhelming fatigue that white-collar workers experience, in large part thanks to the constant online communication at work.

Burnout was experienced by 65% of employees, according to a 2023 survey from HR software company, isolved. After the tiring pandemic years brought about the workplace trends of the Great Resignation and quiet quitting, the Great Exhaustion is just another iteration of workers expressing their frustration.

The antidote to the Great Exhaustion

Earlier this year, burnout expert Emily Ballestros wrote an article for Time about how to get yourself out of the Great Exhaustion. Turns out, it’s exactly what Bella and her followers are doing: opting out.