白领兼职热潮正在悄然兴起

    As an advertising 1 art director, Jeff Quigley isn't the type of worker who traditionally holds two jobs. But after getting hit by a one-day-a-week furlough and pay cut last year, Mr. Quigley has joined a fast-growing sector 2 of the work force: White-collar moonlighters.

    Now, he puts in a seven-day workweek walking a time-management tightrope 3, logging four long days for his employer and three more selling his design work online and elsewhere, trying to make up the lost income. 'The mentality 4 now is, if I'm not at my computer working, I'm not producing income,' he says.

    Moonlighting traditionally has meant juggling 5 two hourly jobs, or an hourly job plus freelancing. But waves of furloughs, pay cuts and layoffs 7 among professionals and managers have driven many white-collar workers to start cramming 8 a second job into the workweek, too. Some need the added income to make up for pay cuts; others want to avert 9 the risk of losing their income in the event of a layoff 6.

    Some 9% of 4,500 mostly white-collar workers surveyed recently for CareerBuilder.com, a career website, have taken a second job in the past year to make ends meet; no data are available from the past for comparison. Another 19% said they intended to take a second job sometime in 2010.

    While white-collar moonlighters have the advantage of more flexibility 10 on the job, they also face challenges. Juggling the open-ended hours and demands of two white-collar jobs can stretch the workweek to exhausting lengths. The setups raise touchy 11 issues with moonlighters' day-job employers, including potential conflicts of interest.

    Joe Castelano started moonlighting because he couldn't see an end to the pay cuts at his sales job for a financial-services company. With a third child on the way, he says he wondered, 'How am I going to pay for college? How am I going to pay for weddings? How am I going to support my kids the way my parents supported me?'

    He and his wife Jennifer opened a Doctors Express urgent-care clinic in 2008 in Paramus, N.J. The downside: His day job demands up to 80 hours a week, and the clinic is open 80 hours a week. While its 11 employees handle day-to-day operations, Mr. Castelano sometimes works as late as 2 a.m. to handle accounting 13 and administrative 14 tasks, and his workweek has expanded to seven days. The effort to find balance often leaves him 'mentally tired.'

    Many white-collar moonlighters work from home, giving their kids a lesson in financial realities. When Mr. Quigley's two sons, 11 and 8, interrupt him in his home office near Halifax, Nova Scotia, he reminds them that his freelance work pays for the activities they love. 'If you want to continue to play hockey, and if you want to kayak,' he tells them, 'you have to let Daddy work.'

    When job demands clash, moonlighters' day jobs win. Stefanie and Craig Miller 15 both work for the same big company, she as a customer-marketing vice 12 president, and Mr. Miller as a senior logistics executive. For much of the past two years, the Atlanta couple has worked nights and weekends starting a Units mobile-storage business on the side to avoid having 'all our eggs in one basket,' Ms. Miller says.

    They use almost all their vacation time to attend trade shows and other events. When Ms. Miller was called on unexpectedly on a vacation day to make a presentation at her day job, she had to scramble 16 to find someone to cover her planned appearance at a trade show. Mr. Miller sometimes makes storage-unit deliveries after work, driving the truck as late as 1 a.m. On weekends, he sometimes takes his two older children, 9 and 7, along on deliveries.

    The nonstop mental work of two white-collar jobs can leave them unable to relax even when things slow down. Todd Browndyke, Dallas, works 9 1/2-hour days as a senior director of business development for an interactive-marketing agency, then freelances nights and weekends, selling consulting services online.

    To get it all done, he uses the 80-20 rule: spending 80% of his time on the 20% of work that is most important. He thinks up ideas while working out on the elliptical machine or brushing his teeth. To stay alert, he runs up his office stairs instead of taking the elevator, and does trunk twists at his desk.

    He is also studying for his MBA on the side. Sometimes, all the mental work leaves his mind racing 17 so fast that he tosses and turns in bed, unable to sleep.

    The growth of freelance websites to higher-paid, white-collar occupations is making it easier to moonlight. Accountants, lawyers, marketers and other managers and professionals seeking work on PeoplePerHour.com have more than doubled in the past year to 58,000, says founder 18 Xenios Thrasyvoulou.

    White-collar moonlighters face some touchy issues with employers. Most feel obligated, either ethically 19 or out of loyalty 20, to tell their employers about their second jobs. They have to tiptoe around potential conflicts of interest, avoiding taking clients who compete with their employer or their employer's clients, for example. Also, they have to avoid using their employer's name to promote any sideline jobs or businesses.

    After imposing 21 a pay freeze in 2008, Jen Klabis's employer, a university research laboratory where she works as a technician, approved her plan to moonlight as a graphic 22 designer to meet rising living costs. She squeezes freelance projects into her 40- to 50-hour work weeks. The setup became complicated, however, when the university wanted to hire her as a designer. She had to form her own company, Alice Graphix, Chicago, and sign an independent-contractor agreement to resolve potential conflicts of interest, she says.

    The trend may mark a lasting 23 change. Like many of the white-collar freelancers 24 interviewed, Ms. Klabis sees moonlighting as a permanent part of her life and plans to continue even after the pay cut is lifted later this year.