(US) The employment of more workers than is necessary, typically because of labor union rules (or sometimes deals with organized crime, a government, etc), especially upon the introduction of new tech
(US) The employment of more workers than is necessary, typically because of labor union rules (or sometimes deals with organized crime, a government, etc), especially upon the introduction of new technology.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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Secretly holding two or more full-time remote jobs at the same time, without disclosing the others to any of the employers, in order to multiply one's salary. The practice was popularised by the r/overemployed subreddit and the overemployed.com community, founded in 2021 by an anonymous tech worker after the pandemic normalised work-from-home. Practitioners (often called "OEs") rotate between meetings, use separate laptops and phone numbers, and coach each other on calendar management and how to handle the inevitable scheduling clash. The legality varies by jurisdiction and contract — exclusivity and moonlighting clauses are common — but in most US states it is a contractual rather than criminal issue.
(slang, vulgar, derogatory, labor, economics) Meaningless or unnecessary wage labor which the worker is obliged to pretend to have a purpose.
(chiefly, British, Ireland, NZ, AU) Dismissed from employment because no longer needed.
The professional version of romantic "cushioning": keeping your options warm — updating your CV, taking recruiter calls, freelancing on the side, nurturing a network — while still employed full-time, so that if your current job collapses you have a soft landing already in motion. The term spread through HR and LinkedIn commentary in 2022–23 against a backdrop of tech layoffs, hiring freezes and recession headlines, when even high-performers stopped trusting their employers to give them notice. Career cushioning is generally framed as a rational defensive move rather than disloyalty, and overlaps heavily with the rise of side hustles and "polyworking".