Moonlighting and the minimum wage

In this paper, we investigate the effects of the introduction of a nationwide minimum wage in Germany on main jobs, secondary jobs and their interaction by exploiting large-scale administrative data and variation in exposure to the minimum wage across jobs. While we find that the national minimum wage raised earnings but did not lower employment for both job types at an individual level, we document differential effects on working time adjustments: For main jobs, it increased the likelihood of upgrading marginal to regular jobs. For secondary jobs, it rather led to working hours reductions in order to maintain tax advantages. We also provide evidence that individuals holding more than one job (moonlighters) who experienced a minimum-wage-induced decline of working hours on their main job partially transferred hours to their secondary job instead.