The project Moonlighting: understanding the quality and consequences of working multiple jobs is a transdisciplinary and multi-method study of the quality of work and wellbeing of contemporary multiple jobholders
The project Moonlighting: understanding the quality and consequences of working multiple jobs is a transdisciplinary and multi-method study of the quality of work and wellbeing of contemporary multiple jobholders.
The project is funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for the period 2024-2029.
Working in the new economy is increasingly of a flexible and fragmented nature. Multiple jobholders [MJHs], or so-called moonlighters, can be considered emblematic of how work fragmentation and combinations affect the quality of work and total worker wellbeing. MOONLIGHT researches the quality of work in first, second and other jobs and how this translates into total worker wellbeing. We study MJHs through comparative research in seven advanced economies: Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States – countries with increasing levels of MJHs, but different welfare state traditions, regulations and norms. The research relies on new comparative cross-national and dynamic data. A unique and crucial feature of the programme’s empirical approach is the development of an app for dynamic quality and wellbeing assessment.
From this perspective, the MOONLIGHT project aims to introduce an interpretative framework for quality and total worker wellbeing and to understand the consequences of working multiple jobs.
The project is carried out by the Principal Investigator, one post-doctoral researcher, two PhD-students and three research assistants based at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies – Hugo Sinzheimer Institute (AIAS-HSI) of the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands).