Side Hustle Survey: New Insights About Independent Workers Entering 2024

We define independent workers as people who are earning an income through self-employment. These workers generally fall into two main categories:

• Freelancers: People whose self-employed work is their main (or only) source of income.
• Side hustlers: People who take on self-employed work for an additional income steam alongside their main job.

What do these populations have in common? Both have moved away from traditional forms of employment, choosing to work independently on their own terms rather than just for an employer.

Why they pursued a side hustle or freelance job, what types of jobs they picked up, and the outlook in these different industries are exactly what our survey hopes to uncover. Here’s a deeper look at our sample.

Demographic Profile of Independent Workers in the US

There are a few key differences in the characteristics and behavior of these two groups. For instance, side hustlers tend to be younger than freelancers. Side hustlers are more often male, under the age of 40 years old, and live in urban areas.

Freelancers, on the other hand, are more often women. They tend to be above the age of 40 years old and live in suburban areas.

Both groups, however, share key similarities. Independent workers, in general, are more likely to be men and have at least a college-level education. Moreover, the majority of independent workers work in an office only or follow a hybrid office/home work style.

The most common job category among all independent workers is caregiving, which includes jobs like babysitting, pet sitting, and dog walking. Approximately 15% of respondents do this type of work.

However, when we break down how the popularity of these different jobs differs between freelancers and side hustlers, we notice some interesting trends.

Popularity of Side Hustles vs. Freelance Jobs

Note: We excluded results regarding taking paid surveys as a side hustle.

Writing, editing, and blogging jobs are more popular as side hustles than as primary income sources. On the other hand, e-commerce, making handmade crafts, and coaching/consulting are the most popular forms of independent work that people take on as their primary job.

Men and women tend to work different jobs

Several job categories have clear gender differences. The most female-dominated fields are babysitting/pet care/personal care, selling handmade crafts, and house cleaning.

The most male-dominated fields, on the other hand, are manual labor, creative work, and IT-related jobs. Driving-related work and writing/editing/blogging are the only job categories with an equal gender distribution.

Job Distribution of Men vs. Women

Of the people who choose to work independently, 74% cite financial necessity as a motivating factor. This isn’t particularly surprising. A much smaller percentage (26%) do it purely out of interest—for example, to monetize an existing hobby or learn new skills.

Although the greatest number of respondents say that both financial necessity and interest motivate them to do their independent work, the number one most motivating factor for independent work is “earning extra spending money,” reported by 58% of respondents.

Worker Motivations by Industry

With that said, it’s not all about the money. Only 22% of side hustlers prefer their main job, even though for 69% of them, their main job pays more than their side hustle. This could indicate that for some side hustlers, high pay from their primary job is a major factor keeping them from switching to full-time gig work.

Teaching/tutoring, making handmade crafts, IT services, writing/editing/blogging, and e-commerce are the job types with the highest percentages of workers motivated by passion or interest. The desire to learn a new skill is most common among IT workers, data analysts, and teachers/tutors.

People tend to take on physical jobs out of financial necessity

Jobs like house cleaning, driving gigs, sex-related work, and manual labor tend to attract workers who are looking for a new job strictly out of necessity. Product testing is one possible exception, but it does have a few characteristics in common with these other types of jobs.

Specifically, all of these types of work are generally perceived as relatively easy to get into, with low barriers to entry, low startup costs, and a quick start-up time. People who are struggling financially may not have the time or financial resources to start a job that requires gaining new skills or knowledge or investing in equipment.

Overall, side hustlers and freelancers have similar average earnings from independent work. Freelancers earn $2,500 per month on average, and side hustlers earn $2,600. Over half of independent workers in both categories earn under $2,000 per month.

Side hustlers make more than freelancers

One surprising result from our survey is that compared with freelancers, side hustlers achieve slightly higher average earnings in roughly half the working time (16 vs. 31 hours per week). The majority of side hustlers spend less than 20 hours per week on side gigs, whereas 38% of freelancers spend 40+ hours per week working their independent jobs.

Most side hustlers also have full-time jobs, meaning they’re working more hours overall—and they’re also earning much more. On top of their $2,600 average monthly earnings from side hustles, these workers earn an average of $4,800 per month from their primary job. This clocks in at an average total income of $7,400 per month, or $88,800 per year.

The highest-paying job category is coaching and consultancy

Earnings differ widely across job types. Jobs associated with the highest overall earnings among individual workers are coaching, consultancy, and personal training jobs ($5,200 per month on average). These are followed by IT jobs ($4,800), teaching/tutoring ($3,800), data entry/analysis ($3,700), and office/clerical work ($3,700). Job types associated with the lowest overall earnings are house cleaning and product testing.

Independent Worker Monthly Earnings by Job Type

Half of the survey respondents say that they earn more money than they initially expected from their independent work. This is particularly true in urban areas (65%). The top five job categories with the most unexpectedly high earnings are writing/editing/blogging, renting, office/clerical work, IT work, and house cleaning.

One of the main factors motivating survey respondents to start a new side hustle or freelance gig is increased cost of living and inflation. But in addition to prompting their switch to gig work, inflation affects their jobs in a few key ways.

The main negative impacts of inflation that workers report include fewer customers (30%) and more job competition (28%). However, some independent workers have benefited from inflation.

In particular, 19% of workers say that inflation has allowed them to increase the prices of their goods or services, helping them to obtain higher profits. This is most often the case with workers in the manual labor and IT services job categories.

The impact of COVID-19

It’s no secret that the pandemic had a major impact on the job market in the US. We can see some of its effects in the dramatic rise and fall in popularity of side hustles during the 2020–2023 period.

Popularity of Independent Work by Year

For starters, 2020 was the peak year for side hustles in the past 10 years, with 26% of current side hustlers reporting that they started new gigs that year. Among current independent workers, 19% say they started their freelance gig or side hustle to cope with financial or career difficulties caused by the pandemic.

During this side hustle boom, driving-related work was particularly popular. Notably, however, freelance work didn’t have the same popularity.

The challenges independent workers face vary depending on their age, the type of work they do, and whether they freelance or do side hustles in addition to a full-time job. Here’s a summary of the core issues currently affecting the independent workforce.

The rising popularity of gig apps is increasing job competition

The number one barrier that gig app workers face is too much competition. This problem affects 26% of workers.

Gig app usage is much higher in urban areas (81%) than in suburban areas (70%) and rural areas (62%). However, this doesn’t necessarily reflect increased competition. Demand may also be higher in these areas.

Apart from apps that pay for microtasks (e.g., taking surveys), the most common gig apps are food or grocery delivery apps (e.g., Uber Eats and Doordash) and general-purpose freelance job platforms (e.g., Upwork).

Freelancers struggle with unpredictable earnings

Unpredictable earnings is the most prevalent challenge faced by independent workers in the US. Notably, this is the number one issue for freelancers, affecting more than half of these workers (52%). It’s the second-biggest challenge for side hustlers, affecting 36%.

Side hustlers are struggling to manage their time

Time management is the number one biggest challenge faced by side hustlers. Poor work/life balance is also an issue, but for some workers, the concern isn’t a lack of free time—it’s that they don’t have enough time to work.

In particular, independent workers who are 30–39 years old are 2–3 times more likely than other age groups to feel as though they don’t have enough time or energy for their side hustles or freelance work. They’re also more likely to feel like they don’t have enough time to spend on their primary job.

This finding indicates that workers in different age groups face different challenges. Workers above the age of 50 years old, on the other hand, seem the most satisfied with their work/life balance.

Our survey data indicate some surprising trends among freelancers and side hustlers in different industries. Here’s what our results might mean for the future.

Side hustlers aren’t necessarily planning to quit their day jobs

Less than half (42%) of side hustlers plan to eventually replace their main job with their side hustle. The job types held by workers who are most likely to replace their main job with their side hustle are coaching/consulting/personal training, data entry/analysis, IT, selling handmade crafts, and writing/editing/blogging gigs.

The main factors keeping side hustlers from quitting their main jobs include higher salary in their main job (55%), job security (44%), and enjoyment from the variety of having multiple jobs (34%).

This is confirmed by earnings data: On average, side hustlers earn almost twice as much from their main job ($4,800 per month) than from their side hustle ($2,600 per month).

Independent workers are using AI

Over half of independent workers either already use AI tools like ChatGPT for their work or plan to do so in the future. While its main use among independent workers is to generate ideas, many workers also use AI to generate written content or illustrations (44%), automate repetitive tasks (41%), or provide customer service (41%).

The use of AI is more popular among men, and it’s particularly popular among workers in their thirties (40% vs. only 17%–28% in other age groups) and those living in urban areas. Side hustles and freelance jobs with the highest prevalence of AI use are writing/editing/blogging (58%), coaching/personal training (46%), and IT-related services (56%).

Independent workers seem highly optimistic about the impact of AI on their work, with 43% believing it can increase work productivity and only 12% expressing concern that AI will take over their jobs.

The rise of “daylighting” among side hustlers

The concept of “moonlighting” is nothing new—it’s the classic definition of taking on a side gig alongside your primary job. But these days, side hustlers are also working their side gigs while on the clock at their main job. This “daylighting” behavior is especially common among people working from home or in a hybrid home/office setting.

In fact, 85% of side hustlers who work from home daylight—on average, they complete 42% of their total side hustle work while on the clock for their main job. This behavior is much less common among side hustlers not based at home (47%).

On average, side hustlers spend 8 hours per week daylighting. This accounts for 32% of the total time these workers spend on their side hustles overall. A large fraction of daylighters do writing/editing/blogging or IT work.

More than half (55%) of side hustlers who daylight have consent from their employer, and this transparency is much more common among women (63%) than men (49%). However, 17% of daylighters say their employers don’t know and they don’t want them to find out.

We used an online survey platform to gather information about independent workers in the US. This may have led to overrepresentation of some groups, such as people who take paid surveys as a side hustle and those whose side hustles involve computers or online work.

Our raw results show that taking paid surveys is the most popular side hustle among our survey respondents. However, this may not accurately reflect the work behavior of most independent workers in the US. Because our respondents took our survey, they may be more likely to take other surveys. To address this issue, we omitted data about paid surveys altogether.

It’s also possible that the high popularity of paid surveys among our respondents affected other results. For example, daylighting behavior may be more popular among people who do paid surveys as a side hustle, leading to overestimation in the percentage of independent remote workers who daylight while at work.

This omission, along with potential overrepresentation or underrepresentation of certain populations in our survey sample, should be taken into consideration when interpreting our results.