“Tell me what human behavior dogs pay the most attention to,” said the man we had hired to train our newly rescued dog.   “Our tone of voice,” I answered, while my wife said she thought it might be body language.  “It’s body language,” he said. “Dogs are acutely aware of how you stand, how you move, and how you look at them. That’s more important than your tone of voice.  It’s true for dogs, and it’s also true for my middle school students,” he said, smiling.

“What, wait.  You’re a teacher?” I blurted.  He smiled.  “Eighteen years and counting. Training dogs–training their owners, actually–that’s my side hustle.”

He’s not alone in having a side hustle.  Somewhere between 33 and 40 percent of adult Americans have second,  part-time paying jobs. As the economic picture darkens and the price of food and other essential goods rises, more of us may be seeking side hustles.  (Another five per cent of the labor force–nearly 9,000,000 Americans–are holding down two full time jobs.) 

The term our dog trainer used, “side hustle,” may sound kind of sneaky, but it’s an honorable term for a second source of income.  Your Uber, Lyft, or DoorDash drivers may be on their side hustle, driving during their free time to make ends meet.  A few months ago at dinner, we discovered that our waitress taught Second Grade during the day; waiting tables was her side hustle.   When I mentioned side hustles to someone on Martha’s Vineyard, (MA), where I live, he became exasperated. “Just about everyone I know on this island has at least one part-time job, maybe two, because otherwise it’s impossible to make ends meet.”  That’s apparently true across most of the United States, as the income gap widens, because the number of people holding down second jobs has reached levels not seen since the ‘Great Recession’ of 2009.

Not surprisingly, well-to-do Americans have their own variation of the side hustle: Investments.  Doctors, lawyers, business executives, and other white-collar workers rarely have to hold down part-time jobs, because their side hustle is Wall Street.  About 60% of households with 6-figure incomes own stocks and bonds, a second source of support which doesn’t require any heavy lifting.

A few side hustles seem to grow naturally from one’s day job. For example, when I was reporting on public education for PBS and NPR, my (modest) presence on air led to invitations to speak, for (modest) amounts of money.  

However, most side hustles are opportunistic, not organic.  People do what they have to do to support themselves and their families.  

Some side hustles are illegal and/or unethical. Here’s one example: Recently my wife and I returned from Miami to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Because of Elon Musk’s Starship rocket explosion, our flight was delayed and did not land until 4AM. When I asked the cab driver what the fare would be, he said, “If you pay cash, it’s $60.” He then proceeded to drive into Manhattan on the only route that is toll-free. Exhausted though I was, I noticed that the meter was off, so his side hustle was a fare that his Yellow Cab company would never learn about.

Most side hustles are legal.  When we visited Cuba in February, literally everyone we spoke with had some sort of side hustle.  The coffee farmers we met were required to sell 90% of their raw beans to the Cuban government, but the 10% they were allowed to keep sometimes amounted to 13 or 14%, we were told. They roasted those beans and sold them at their home and a roadside stand. They welcomed visitors like us, and we bought their products.  Our guide had his own side hustle, flying to Miami or Mexico City at least once a month with a list of auto parts he knew he could sell–at a profit.  (Half of his side hustle may now be history, because the Trump administration has banned Cubans from traveling to the US.)

We found a striking example of a side hustle at a state-owned cigar factory in Havana, where workers hand-rolled anywhere from 100 to 135 Cuban cigars every day, five days a week.  For this work, they were paid only 10,000 pesos, approximately $30, but they also participated in a state-sponsored side hustle: Each worker got 5 hand-rolled Cuban cigars a day to take home.  On our way into the factory, someone offered me 5 cigars for $30, and the same thing happened on the way out.  Those would-be sellers, our guide told us, were cigar rollers on their break. In short, they work 20 days a month for $30 and 100 cigars, meaning their side hustle can bring in an additional $600.  That’s unusual, because most side hustles provide supplemental income, not the lion’s share.  Apparently the Cuban government is tacitly acknowledging that its system of socialist control does not work, and it’s making adjustments to try to stay in power.

One  job whose very nature would seem to preclude having a side hustle is that of President of the United States, whose responsibility it is to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  While that ought to be an all-consuming job, the current occupant of the White House turns out to have something in common with those Cuban cigar rollers: his side hustles rake in a lot more money than his day job.  Although we pay him $400,000 a year, he pulled in an estimated $9.2 million last year from bitcoin transfers, from business executives eager to meet with him, from Secret Service payments to his hotels when he’s golfing, diplomatic payments to his properties, and on and on.  The ‘Donald J. Trump for President’ Committee spent more than$5 million at his hotels.  This isn’t new, of course: During his first term, it’s estimated that his side hustles brought in nearly $14 million, and, when his family is included, the estimate jumps to a staggering $160 million.

But unlike Donald Trump, the Cuban cigar rollers are doing the job they were hired to do. By contrast, the current President of the United States seems to spend most of his working hours posting on his Truth Social app, holding court with fawning admirers, or playing golf.  

And unlike Trump, those Cuban cigar rollers are held accountable. They close their jobs if they don’t perform. He, on the other hand, is paying scant attention to our Constitution–by law his main job–but is not being held to account.

What’s wrong with this picture?