During the week, Jesse Brown, 34, works as a personal banker at a Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) branch in Vienna, Virginia. On weekends, he sells coffee machines and occasionally goes to area farms to shear sheep.

Around here the cost of living is pretty high, says Brown, who shares a townhouse near Washington D.C. in Annandale, Virginia, with as many as three housemates, and helps support his five-year-old daughter. He says he is trying to make ends meet and save for her as well.

Americans such as Brown are holding multiple jobs to earn extra income in a still-erratic labor market, supplement wages that are essentially flat or seek to get paid for time they spend on hobbies or interests anyway.

About 4.9 percent of working U.S. adults have more than one job, with about half holding a full-time and a part-time position. The share of moonlighters has been steady since 2010, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, though down from 5.2 percent in 2008.

The numbers may be higher than government statistics reflect because there have been fundamental changes in the labor market since the recession and recovery, said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group LLC in Princeton, New Jersey, in an interview.

Renee Kwok, 36, started teaching yoga when she was working as a senior graphic reporter... Read More

Renee Kwok, 36, started teaching yoga when she was working as a senior graphic reporter at Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and picked up more classes after she lost her job at the paper in 2011. Close

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Renee Kwok, 36, started teaching yoga when she was working as a senior graphic reporter at Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and picked up more classes after she lost her job at the paper in 2011.

More people have actually entered and remained in the underground economy than we have seen before, he said. Workers are trying to raise their income even as job growth is sluggish, he said. So while employed, they may also do handyman repairs, or tutor, or fix computers. Many of these are cash transactions and become part of the shadow economy.

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Sheep-Shearing Wells Fargo Banker Bridges U.S. Income Gap