A salary is no longer enough: people are looking for extra jobs

Not everyone can live on their salary, so they are looking for extra jobs. Labour market experts say the popularity of additional jobs is growing but predict that their demand will increase even more in the wake of the economic crisis, Vilija Mačiulskytė writing in tv3.lt news portal.

The extra jobs range from cleaners to teachers and pay several hundred euros a month.

They predict that the number of people wanting to work will increase

Jurgis Kovas, head of Biuro and workis.online, said that the service is run through an online platform.

“It is used by companies that want to find employees particularly quickly – for example, to have extra hands join the team the next day. We are able to offer this service because we already have a pool of people willing to work. 

Every year, we see less activity in the market for extra jobs in the last weeks of August and the first weeks of September. This market is dominated by young people who want to enjoy the last days of summer, and many will start their studies in early September, so they postpone their search for jobs. However, in the second half of September, young people started actively looking for earning opportunities. Also, after the seasonal jobs at the seaside, in rural tourism, in construction or abroad are over, there are a lot of young people looking for additional earning opportunities in November and February”, commented the CEO.

He is confident that the number of people looking for extra work will increase significantly with the onset of the economic recession.

“For example, with the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been a lot of people wanting to earn extra money,” Mr Kovas pointed out.

Kitchen assistants, waiters, sales consultants, couriers and other positions are looking for extra work, he said.

“Usually, the hourly wage for extra work is no different from full-time work – it is set by our clients, i.e. the companies that will use the services of the extra workers. But, of course, the final payment will depend on the number of hours worked and the shift (day or night) agreed or chosen.  

The most common salary is €6-7 per hour on paper, but you can also find positions offering around €10 per hour,” the company manager calculates.

Depending on the hours worked on paper, workers can earn up to several hundred euros extra per month.

According to him, companies looking for extra workers on workis.online are looking for workers for a day, a few days or even a month.

“However, if a permanent position becomes available in the company, the temporary workers can stay on,” Mr Kovas said.

Positions on offer range from cleaners to teachers

Milda Jankauskienė, a spokesperson for the Employment Service, estimated that there are currently 385 registered vacancies for part-time and part-time jobs (1-20 hrs/self).

“Just over half of these job offers are unskilled jobs, mostly as cleaners.

There are a number of part-time offers for teachers. There are also part-time offers for sales clerks, cashiers, administrators, dishwashers, accountants, kitchen workers, kindergarten teachers, health professionals, etc.

Almost half of the part-time job offers are registered in Vilnius. Unskilled jobs are usually offered at or slightly above the minimum wage. For skilled jobs, it depends on the position, working hours and other factors”, said the Employment Service specialist.

Rita Karavaitienė, Marketing Manager at CV-online, a job market portal, noted that offers of additional work are currently attracting a lot of attention from candidates, but even more so for home-based jobs.

“E-commerce, communication and digital marketing offers are the most popular. But, of course, they are popular with freelancers”, said the labour market specialist.

Changes for workers in autumn?

Presenting the latest forecasts, Tadas Povilauskas, an economist at SEB Bank, said that the Lithuanian economy would experience a recession as electricity and gas prices continue to rise.

The economist said that many areas of the economy will experience difficulties, and the labour market is no exception.

“The situation in the Lithuanian labour market in the first half of the year was very good, with both the growth in the number of employees and the decline in unemployment far exceeding the forecast. Moreover, with the war in Ukraine, the drop in unemployment in Lithuania to 5.2% in the second quarter is an excellent result. Nevertheless, we believe that the labour market will cool slightly next year, and the average unemployment rate will rise from a forecast of 6% this year to 6.8% in 2023.

However, this would be a much smaller change in unemployment than during the pandemic. A heated labour market is conducive to wage growth, as we had clearly seen this year when the annual change in average pre-tax wages was almost 14% in the second quarter. However, we forecast that next year’s average wage growth will be more modest than this year’s, at 8.5%, compared to more than 12% this year, due to the slower pace of the economy. The forecast increase in the minimum monthly wage will continue to have a significant positive impact on average wages,” commented T. Povilauskas.

According to him, other countries have already confirmed an increase in the minimum wage, while Lithuania has not yet decided on an increase.

“In Poland, for example, the minimum wage will increase by 15% in total. Moreover, it will rise by 10% from the 1st of January and by another 5% from the 1st of July.” – The economist gave an example.