• Goldman Sachs Asset Management found 80% of Gen Zers have worked outside their primary jobs.
• People across generations said this was because they needed the money or for financial security.
• Not feeling secure can affect financial goals, like homeownership.

Having a job doesn't always mean you have enough to cover daily living or savings goals.

A July survey of Americans by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and the behavioral economics firm Escalent found over 60% of respondents have worked outside their primary roles, largely because they needed to. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said work covers their expenses, but it's tough to get ahead.

"Employment remains essential for retirement security, but for many Americans, it is no longer sufficient," a Goldman Sachs Asset Management retirement report said.

Gen Zers were most likely to say they earn or have earned money outside their primary job; millennials followed closely behind. The report said that's despite most Gen Z and millennial workers reporting their jobs provide financial stability.

"Younger workers may feel stable in their main jobs while still seeing extra work as necessary," the report said.

Throughout the generations, a majority said they're doing gig or side work out of necessity or for financial security.

"The traditional full-time job may no longer be carrying the full weight of financial security," the report said. "For many, supplementing income appears to have become part of the baseline."

Some Americans are living paycheck to paycheck or adjusting their budgets to cope with rising gas prices and other everyday expenses. It can be hard to get ahead when wage growth has been consistently falling short of inflation, and it's tough to find a new job to try to earn more money.

Not feeling financially secure can lead to putting off savings goals. Eighty-three percent of Gen Z and 78% of millennials said they put major financial goals on hold. Forty-one percent of millennials have delayed emergency savings despite being employed, and 30% said they delayed housing or homebuying goals. For Gen Zers, the shares were 35% and 34%, respectively.

While some people may be working a part-time side job, others are "overemployed" and working multiple full-time jobs. One millennial has worked five full-time remote IT jobs, earning over $700,000 annually. As Business Insider's Jacob Zinkula reported, overemployed people use their extra earnings for different reasons, such as retiring early or paying down debt.

Having multiple income streams can also be considered a "portfolio career," where people piece together different kinds of work, such as writing a newsletter, doing a side gig, and holding an office job. It can be one way to try "stability stacking" to feel more secure about your career if, for example, you were laid off and lost an income stream.

"When you decentralize everything from one 9-to-5 and build a portfolio career, you protect yourself from the emotional and financial shock if and when business needs change at your 9-to-5," said career coach Janel Abrahami in a TikTok video.

And sometimes, working a side gig can become a complete career pivot. Harlan Rappaport, in his 20s, turned his email marketing side hustle into a full-time career after working as an investment analyst at a financial institution.

"I used to get really excited about the numbers, but over the last couple of years, I realized it's more about the freedom I've had in my life over the last couple of years as a freelancer," Rappaport said in an as-told-to essay. "I don't miss family events, can travel when I want, and can work from anywhere in the world."

• Gen Zers are much less likely to have at least one kid than older generations at the same age.
• Not wanting kids, affordability problems, and medical challenges are plausible reasons.
• Having at least three kids is becoming less common across income percentiles, except in the top 1%.

Birth rates in the US have been falling for decades, but there's been an especially large drop in the likelihood of Gen Zers in their 20s having a kid compared with their older peers at the same age.

For 26-year-old Gen Zers, the likelihood of having at least one kid was 26%, down from 47% for millennials, 50% for Gen X, and 46% for boomers at that age. There were also differences between Gen Z and older generations in the probability of wanting another kid.

That's based on an analysis by a group of researchers published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Julie Hotchkiss, a research economist at the Atlanta Fed, told Business Insider the analysis controls for education, partnership status, and some health conditions. The analysis uses National Survey of Family Growth data up to 2023.

From affordability challenges to concerns about the future, there are several likely reasons behind the lower probabilities. Hotchkiss said that a lower desire to have kids is one explanation.

Gen Zer Brooklen Farley said in an as-told-to Business Insider essay in 2023 that she decided during college she didn't want to have kids. Farley is worried about issues like the economy and climate crisis.

"Many people call us Zoomers, but honestly, a lot of us are doomers: We feel pessimistic about the future and don't want to subject our children to it," she said.

The research also notes that there's been a rise in medical challenges related to having kids. The researchers looked at impaired fecundity, or trouble becoming pregnant or carrying to term. The average probability of impaired fecundity at 26 was 18% for Gen Z compared to 10% for boomers at that age. The probabilities are higher for older ages — the likelihood for 40-year-old millennials was about 30%, higher than the 26% for Gen Xers at that age.

"If we want to talk about birth rates, we can't just talk about preferences," Hotchkiss said. "It's not just that darned younger generation not wanting, just being selfish and not wanting to have children. There's also really a very real medical issue that needs to be addressed."

Another problem is all the financial costs that come with being a parent. LendingTree found the cost of raising a kid for over 18 years adds up to $303,418 after tax exemptions and credits, or about $17,000 a year.

Affordability issues aren't just a Gen Z problem. Surrounded by a large family growing up, millennial Lizzie Lawson said in a Business Insider essay that she assumed she would also have a large family one day.

"When I was a kid in the early 2000s, my dad was an electrician and sole provider for our growing family of eight," Lawson said in a Business Insider essay, adding that her family got by with the help of coupon cutting and hand-me-downs. "Money was tight, but we also owned a house in a safe suburb, and my parents sent six kids to Catholic school from K-8."

Lawson, a college instructor whose husband is a physical therapist with $100,000 in student loans, said the economy is different from the one she grew up in.

"We can't afford to have one of us stay at home, and there aren't enough coupons in the world to cover the rising cost of day care," she said.

Having large families is rarer than in the past

Michael Konczal, vice president of policy and research at the Economic Security Project, said in his newsletter that across income percentiles, families with at least three kids have become less common since the 90s, except at the top 1%.

"A third kid isn't new for them; what's new is that it has become rarer for everyone else," he said. "Compared with the 1990s, families with three or more kids became less common overall and among the rest of the top 10%. The top 1%'s estimated share barely changed, though the uncertainty is substantial. Maybe all the stresses that made childbearing more difficult over the past 30 years just bounced right off the 1%?"

The US fertility rate has cooled to 1.6 births per woman, below the 2.1 replacement rate, which Hotchkiss said would translate to slower population growth. The Congressional Budget Office projects that just a few years from now, the number of births in the US could fall below the number of deaths, which could have implications in future decades.

"Over time, the negative net contribution of births and deaths increasingly offsets the positive contribution of net immigration, until population growth slows to zero in 2056. The population is projected to shrink thereafter," the CBO said.

• Social Security's 3.6% cost-of-living adjustment exceeds recent job stayers' wage growth.
• Economist Aaron Terrazas warns inflation could drive economic inequality.
• Baby boomers are helping to prop up the economy, as they're in their core retirement spending years.

There's an income premium for job switchers — and for retirees.

The Social Security Administration recently released the cost-of-living adjustment for next year. About 72 million recipients will experience a 3.6% increase in their benefits in January, higher than the September three-month moving average year-over-year median wage growth for job stayers at 3.4%.

Independent economist Aaron Terrazas said cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries were higher than job-stayers' increases in three of the past six years, the most recent being the 8.7% 2023 increase announced in 2022 amid the post-pandemic inflation spike.

"Retiree income is adjusted with the cost of living, whereas people who are working are mostly compensated according to the cost of labor," Terrazas said. "For most of the past decades, we've been in a low inflation labor shortage world, so that's worked out in workers' favor, but it feels like that's shifting underneath the surface."

The headline consumer price index increased 3.7% from a year ago in September, moving away from the Fed's 2% inflation target but down from the high rates back in 2022. The Social Security Administration bases the annual cost-of-living adjustment on the average of a related inflation rate during the third quarter of each year.

"Indexing incomes to the cost of living rather than cost of labor is a big part of what fueled inflation, the wage-price spiral in the 1970s," Terrazas said. "We moved away from that practice for most of the workforce, but not for retirees. With the growing share of Americans in their retiring years, more and more consumers are, whether we want it or not, having their incomes indexed to inflation rather than the cost of labor."

This, Terrazas thinks, could continue to drive the K-shaped economy of the haves and the have-nots, as he said older consumers are driving an outsize share of spending, although that could change as boomers start to age out of the peak retirement spending years.

"Baby boomers are in their core retirement spending years," he said. "When we think about consumer trends and what's holding up the economy, that is something we can't forget — that once people reach their 80s, we should expect that spending to start to contract as people become homebound."

Meanwhile, the three-month moving average for job switchers was higher than for job stayers and higher than the announced COLA, so job-hopping could be better than job-staying if you prioritize earning more. The problem is that it may be hard to find a new opportunity, depending on where you're looking. White-collar fields have been experiencing job loss, and employment levels in the leisure and hospitality sector have been pretty volatile.

The US has spent the last couple of years in a low-hire, low-fire period: Layoffs are low, so if you have a job, you're likely doing OK, but job openings and hiring have also been anemic, making an ominous situation for job seekers.

While that means employees may be more secure if they have a job, it also means employers don't have to do a lot to convince people to stay. Some workers have turned to "loud working" to try to make sure their accomplishments are being heard internally at their company or externally via LinkedIn or other platforms, whether that be because of fear of job cuts, to make the case for a raise, or some other reason.

"It's tough, I think, for job seekers to see headlines when we get the jobs report that unemployment is low, we're continuing to create jobs, but it's something very different from what they're feeling," Terrazas said. "And so I think it is important for them to understand that message that they're not alone. Many people, especially in white-collar work, are struggling to find new jobs or struggling to stay afloat in their workplaces."

• Higher- and lower-income Americans are more likely than those in the middle to say they're living paycheck to paycheck.
• The top and bottom also struggled with making credit card payments and are delaying financial goals.
• Lifestyle creep is one reason high earners are feeling anxious.

Low and high earners have at least one thing in common: they're more likely than those somewhere in the middle to say they're living paycheck to paycheck.

A July survey of over Americans by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and behavioral economics firm Escalent showed about 61% of working respondents with less than $50,000 said they're primarily living paycheck to paycheck, meaning they struggle to save or make progress toward long-term goals. The share dropped to 22% for those with $100,000 to $200,000 but rose to about 37% for those with more than $500,000.

"Financial security as reported does not rise in a straight line with income; it follows a u-shaped pattern," a recent report said.

However, those at the top and bottom are facing different challenges.

Lower earners are struggling to keep up with the basics. A Pew Research Center survey found 42% of lower-income US adults struggled to afford daily transportation costs, and 39% of lower-income adults said the same about paying their rent or mortgage.

High gas prices don't help; they're rising at a faster clip than before the Iran war. Food-at-home prices, which include groceries, are rising more slowly, but they are still increasing. And the gap between what you need to earn to afford a house and the actual median household income has worsened, according to a tracker from the Atlanta Fed.

Meanwhile, high earners with more than $300,000 are facing "more complex financial lives, higher lifestyle expectations, larger fixed commitments, and a wider gap between the retirement they envision and what they believe they have secured," the report said. Lifestyle creep could also be a factor, said Chris Ceder, senior retirement strategist at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

U-shapes everywhere

The report also showed there were U-shapes by income level in how often financial concerns make it tough to focus at work, how many people are struggling with credit card payments, and how many said they're delaying financial goals.

Those at the highest end of the income spectrum also had the highest share saying they've had to delay retirement despite being employed, at 45%.

When asked about what stands most in the way of saving up for retirement, 31% of Americans overall said housing costs, 31% said day-to-day living expenses, and 27% said debt payments.

"These expenses arrive every month, cannot be deferred, and they are paid first," the report said. "Retirement is often paid last."

Ceder said housing costs, family care, and healthcare are top concerns for the upper end of the income spectrum, while debt management is among the top three for the lower end.

Taking on more work

Ceder said that the highest-income workers were the most likely to take on multiple jobs. A likely reason could be saving up for unexpected costs.

"You would think again that mostly people who are at the lower-income spectrum may be working a second job or doing gig or freelance, but it's actually flipped," Ceder said.

A ZipRecruiter survey from earlier this year found workers earning over $150,000 were most likely to have supplemental work — with about 45% saying so compared to 31% of those making between $25,000 and $50,000.

Ceder said this hustling from the higher earners could suggest they're aware of their long-term financial goals and want to get ahead of that.

"They actually are pretty confident that they're going to be able to reach retirement, but some of that supplemental work is going towards retirement," he said.

Are you living paycheck to paycheck? We're looking to hear about how people are doing in today's economy and any changes they've had to make. Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.

• Felipe Rochi lost one of his jobs while his wife was pregnant with their first child.
• They decided to take the leap and grow their side hustle — a rental camcorder business — together.
• As new parents, the two of them split the tasks involved in running the business.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rachel Calaj and Felipe Rochi, a married couple in their 30s. Together, they run a wedding camcorder rental business that they started as a side hustle. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Rochi: I'm an SEO supervisor. I also had a second job in the SEO space, but I was terminated this summer, in early June.

Calaj: I've been a school psychologist, typically hired through an agency to work for a district on a contract basis.

We found out we were pregnant last December, and my contract ended in May. We were trying to think throughout that time what we would do next year.

Felipe lost his job before our baby shower

Calaj: As a first-time mom, I wanted to stay home with my child. We were trying to see if Felipe's two jobs would be enough for me to do so. Then, he got terminated the day before our baby shower. It was a very sad moment for us, but we still had a great time at the baby shower, even if it wasn't the best timing.

Rochi: Unexpectedly losing my job and her contract ending around that time impacted our income significantly.

Calaj: It changed everything for us; it was a turning point. We were in the middle of buying baby clothes and all the things that you need.

Rochi: I applied for a decent number of jobs. You never hear back from jobs fast enough. You're just waiting to see if you got it. My dad owns a cleaning business, so we considered asking him for work in the meantime. With a kid on the way, we were thinking about anything I could do.

Calaj: I reached out to the district that I worked for the previous year to see if I could do some flexible, part-time contract work. We were trying anything we could to have extra income at that point.

We turned an idea into a new income stream

Rochi: In April, I saw videos of somebody renting camcorders to people to record their weddings, and then editing the footage for them.

I immediately thought it was a really cool idea.

My brain started to spin. Before even telling Rachel, I created a website and a TikTok account for our business, Pass the Cam, and posted a few videos just to see if it could work. I've tried a lot of side hustles over the years, including starting a newsletter that sent people entry-level remote job postings and creating a product called DooBagz, a bag dog owners could clip on to hold a used poop bag. However, they didn't work out.

Calaj: With this camcorder side hustle, I could see real momentum behind it from the start. Felipe hit the ground running, and when our first order came in, I was so excited.

Our first orders gave us hope we could do this

Rochi: We were at T.J. Maxx one Friday night when somebody reached out and said their videographer canceled and she needed our camcorders the next weekend. I was like, "Oh snap, I have to ship this out ASAP."

I bought a Sony 4K camcorder and memory card from a camera store nearby for around $1,100, including the warranty, picked it up on Saturday, and bought a random box to ship it to her.

Because we didn't have the money to pay an editor right away, and we were trying to pay off the camcorder I'd just bought, I edited the footage she sent back, since I have a little bit of experience with editing. She loved it.

That first client was in May, before I lost my job. By the end of the month, we had gotten two more clients.

It gave me something to fall back on when my termination happened in June. I said, "Hey, I got a couple of clients out of this, so why not try this more?" I was still applying for jobs, though, because a second job felt more secure than betting on a side hustle.

Calaj: Of course, there was still some uncertainty. You always wonder whether something will take off or eventually fizzle out.

We've had nearly 100 clients since we started

Rochi: Our goal is to reach 100 clients by the end of 2026. We're nearly there, and we still have some months to go, so I think it's possible.

We've made over $50,000 in net volume since starting in May, about half of which was in September alone.

I see more camcorder rental businesses showing up compared to when we started, but with millions of weddings a year in the US, I believe there's room for everyone.

We try to price our packages slightly lower than our competitors, run almost monthly promos, and include everything without charging for add-ons.

We actually dropped the prices for our two most expensive packages in order to stay competitive. Our packages are $429 for our starter package, $699 for the core package, and $899 for our deluxe package. They differ in terms of the type and number of camcorders, the length of edited video, and additional attachments like microphones and lights.

Calaj: I handle the operations side, like managing bookings, handling shipping logistics, ordering packaging, hunting down the best deals on boxes and stickers, and growing our camcorder inventory. The cameras are probably the biggest expense that we have at this moment, but it's been worth it so far.

My husband leads marketing and is the main point of contact for every couple we work with. He takes care of the camcorders themselves, making sure each one is working properly and set up with the right settings before it ships. He also works with our editors and reviews their work, so everything we send out is top quality.

On top of that, he manages our finances, making sure we're smart about what we earn and how much we reinvest back into the business.

Rochi: Sometimes overbooking happens, or we don't have enough inventory. I think that's all part of learning a new business.

We wish we'd had something like this at our wedding

Rochi: Some might disagree with our ways, but we know how expensive weddings already are.

Calaj: When we got married about four years ago, we did more of an elopement-style wedding with our close friends and family because we were starting off in our careers. We had disposable cameras; we still have those pictures around our house.

To hear that wedding videos can now cost thousands of dollars — it's just an insane amount.

We both said that if camcorder rentals were around when we got married, it would be a really cool thing to do. It's really sweet looking at the videos; it just feels very homey.

Rochi: The coolest part is hearing back from the couples over text or in reviews.

We became new parents in August

Calaj: It's definitely been hard to be new parents, but we love it.

Rochi: I always told her my goal: "I want you to stay home and be with our kids." I've stopped looking for a second job. The way the business is going now, and if I keep my full-time SEO job and the growth of our camcorder business keeps going, she won't have to go back to work.

Calaj: It's been really promising so far. At the moment, I have no plans of going back. Once my baby got here, I was like, "Yeah, I cannot imagine going back in six weeks."

It's really special to spend our time building something that's ours.

Rochi: There's no better feeling than knowing we trusted each other enough to take the leap. We lost an income, had a baby on the way, and had no idea what was ahead, but we believed this could work. Seeing it actually work has been incredible.

• A Pew Research survey found only 47% of middle-income earners could save money in the past year.
• Lower-income earners are also having a hard time saving and affording necessities.
• Inflation moving in the wrong direction doesn't help the affordability situation.

America's middle earners are feeling the squeeze.

A new analysis from the Pew Research Center examines how Americans' finances are faring, an especially salient topic in a midterm season where affordability is very much on the ballot.

America's middle earners — those who make between $50,700 and $152,000 after adjusting for their family sizes and the cost of living in their areas — increasingly don't have enough saved for an emergency. Just over half of middle-income Americans say they don't have rainy-day funds that would cover expenses for three months in the event of an emergency.

Meanwhile, 47% of middle-income earners — and a measly 24% of lower-income earners — reported being able to save money in the past year. Across all income tiers, the majority of respondents said they had cut back spending on extras like eating out or streaming services.

Those dwindling emergency funds and sacrifices might be due to rising costs, which often take a particularly large bite out of lower-earners' wallets.

It could be getting worse; inflation is moving in the wrong direction. In September, the consumer price index inflation rate rose from 3.4% to 3.7%, just above the 3.6% forecast. Plus, inflation-adjusted wages have been falling for six months.

Today's economy is still more difficult for those at the bottom of the earnings ladder. Fifty-one percent of lower-income respondents said they can pay all of their bills in full in the 2026 survey, down from 56% in 2020. For middle-income respondents, the share dropped from 81% in 2020 to 78% in 2026, while the share of upper-income respondents held steady at 93%.

Pew also found 71% of lower-income US adults struggled with at least one kind of basic necessity, like affording medical care or paying their rent or mortgage, in the past year, compared with 39% of middle-income and 13% of upper-income Americans.

But the latest survey marks another sign that middle-income earners are increasingly aligning with their lower-earning peers, a dour sign for the health of the middle class. A separate report from the Urban Institute found that, even as lower-income renters were the most likely to report issues paying the rent, middle-income renters were increasingly likely to report struggling to pay.

Similarly, middle-income earners' consumer sentiment has switched from mirroring their higher-earning peers to more closely aligning with lower earners — another sign that the middle class is falling on harder economic times.

"Working people are living on the edge, working longer and harder than ever for less money," said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. "They're angry every time they fill the tank. They're terrified of what their heating bills will look like this winter."

• Have you gotten a raise over the past couple of years? Inflation has likely eaten it away.
• Inflation-adjusted hourly earnings, which had risen after Donald Trump first took office, are now declining.
• And there are ominous signs that inflation could get worse.

If you've gotten a raise over the last two years, almost all of those gains have now been eaten by inflation.

That is, if you're the average wage-earner, considering the latest statistics released this week showing that prices were rising at a faster clip than expected.

It's more evidence that affordability challenges in the US economy aren't going away. It also means that average hourly pay, which had risen after Donald Trump took office in January 2025, is now right back to where it started, when taking inflation into account.

The average hourly wage was $35.84 in January 2025, according to federal statistics, or $37.79 in today's dollars, adjusted for inflation. The average hourly wage last month was $37.81 — basically unchanged over the past 20 months.

Wednesday's consumer price index inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics came in hotter than expected, with prices up 3.7% over the year in September. Economists had expected a 3.6% increase, and the rate was well above August's 3.4%.

"We read the September CPI report as another piece of evidence that the US is facing a persistent inflation problem," economists at BNP Paribas said in a note to clients.

That problem means high prices — including gasoline that was up 9.1% in September compared to the previous month — are gobbling up pay increases you might get at work.

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, underlined that consumer price growth since 2025 has eroded nearly all wage gains, citing the impact of the war in Iran, which began at the end of February, on Americans' wallets.

"This is a very different picture from President Trump's first term when wages were up over 15%, well above about 8% inflation," Long said. "It helps explain the frustration many households feel right now with the economy."

Higher prices are adding to a general sense of malaise about the economy. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index dipped to 46.3 in October, down from 71.7 in January 2025.

Joanne Hsu, the director of the survey, said higher gas prices driven by the Middle East conflict have added to the ongoing cost-of-living pressures over the past several years.

Higher prices and inflation outpacing wage growth can be especially tough for Americans who are on tight budgets or living paycheck to paycheck. "When we look at the majority of the US workforce, people who are middle- and lower-income households, higher costs in things like gas and groceries take up a larger share of their income," said ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud.

It's important to note, there is more than one way to read the wage numbers as they relate to inflation — and in some ways, workers have actually come out ahead.

For example, average weekly earnings have grown faster over the last year than average hourly earnings, as the number of hours the typical worker works has edged up.

The Trump administration, when asked for comment, highlighted annual earnings. "Under President Trump, private sector workers have seen their wages continue to outpace inflation, with average annual earnings growing by more than $600," said White House spokesperson Matthew Middleton.

Inflation will play a role in the midterms

The midterm elections are in just a few weeks, and affordability will likely be a key concern.

An Economic Innovation Group and Echelon Insights survey in September asked people what elected officials should prioritize most to make life better for workers. The survey said that 45% of American workers wanted officials to prioritize reducing the cost of everyday essentials, and 23% wanted them to focus on making housing more affordable.

Long, at Navy Federal, said the "modest increase" in grocery prices is a silver lining in the latest consumer price index report. Food at home, which includes groceries, rose at a slower pace than April's 2.9%, with prices increasing 1.8% year over year in September.

"But it's inevitable food prices will likely rise in the months ahead as higher diesel and transport costs are passed along to consumers," Long said.

There are other ominous signs that inflation could worsen. Thursday's producer price index report showed that final demand prices rose 1.3% in September, the highest since 2022.