Earlier this week the Governor of the Reserve Bank suggested that those struggling to pay their mortgage due to higher interest rates could ” find additional hours of work, that would put them back into a positive cash flow position”. And it seems that a record number of people are having to do just that.

In June last year a then record 6.44% of employees were working or more jobs. This record was broken in the September quarter with 6.5%, and then broken again in the December quarter with 6.57%. Now we have another record – with 6.65% of all employed working more than one job.

Some 947,300 people are working 2 or more jobs to make ends meet.

While it is good that they are able to get that work, that they have to is a damming state of affairs. It highlights the shift away from secure work paying living wages, to piecemeal work with low wages that is not enough to pay the bills.

Given these latest figures come from the first 3 months of this year, before the latest two interest rate rises, we can only expect this number to keep rising. And given real wages have continued to fall since March we know that more and more workers will need to find another job to make up for falling purchasing power and increased mortgages and rental prices.

It highlights yet again just how most of the damage of this period of inflation has fallen on the shoulders of low-paid workers.