As the COVID-19 crisis cuts jobs, Canadians cash in on hobbies with ‘side hustles’
For Chelsea Hearty and Ian Moores, the recipe for success began with a midnight snack.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, Hearty and Moores, who had worked in food and hospitality, were among the hundreds of thousands of workers who found themselves out of a job and with little to do during lockdown.
Moores decided to fill some time — and a late-night sugar craving — by baking. He got off the couch and put on an apron with a mission to make “the best cookie anyone’s ever had.”
After about an hour of tinkering with a family recipe, Moores had baked up what Hearty described as a “perfect little angel pillow” of a treat.
A few bites in, Hearty and Moores knew they had a buttery hit on their hands.
As the pandemic prompts employers to slash jobs, a number of crafty Canadians are turning their hobbies into “side hustles,” supplemental sources of income that often double as a creative outlet.
From thrifting to mask-sewing to jewelry-making, almost any artisanal enterprise can find a customer base online.
Etsy Canada, an online marketplace that’s popular for side businesses, says new shop openings increased by more than 250 per cent during its most recent quarter, compared to the same period last year.
Some critics see side hustles as a symptom of a precarious labour market that leaves workers with no choice but to enter the gig economy.
But business owners like Hearty and Moores, whose snack led them to found Courage Cookies, credit the pandemic with giving them the push to abandon the daily grind for a shot at self-made success.
The “angel pillow” was the first flavour in their Courage Cookies repertoire. The operation has since expanded from the best-friends-turned-business-partners’ kitchen into an online delivery business operating out of a commercial space, and a semi-permanent pop-up store at Toronto’s Stack’d market.
The pandemic brought Jamie Rajf’s career in the music industry to an abrupt halt. But it also pushed her to follow a childhood passion for hunting down “treasures” in unlikely places by opening up an online vintage shop.
In between job applications, the 29-year-old spent months scouring garage sales and hole-in-the-wall stores for mid-century housewares, carefully curating each decades-old find to appeal to Instagram buyers.
Since launching Good Day Vintage, an Instagram business operated out of her Toronto home, in August, Rajf said she’s sold most of her inventory, turning a profit of a few thousand dollars.
“I have really learned from this that it’s important to have something that you work on that you have total control over,” said Rajf, who found full-time employment over the summer. “I can get out of it what I put into it, as opposed to working for someone else.”
Jeff Donaldson, a doctoral candidate at Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration, said today’s workers need multiple streams of income as a form of “insurance” against industrial disruption.
“Side hustles are not meant to replace your main source of income,” said Donaldson, who specializes in emergency preparedness. “They’re meant to provide insulation.”
Shauna Brail, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Management and Innovation, noted that while some side hustles are passion projects, others are “survival jobs.”
“These are often short-term solutions, particularly for those ... who haven’t necessarily chosen to work in the gig economy,” said Brail. “In a way, it’s chosen them, because it’s the last possible option.”
She pointed to women in the workforce who have shouldered the brunt of the economic fallout of the pandemic, particularly mothers who have been tasked with taking on extra caregiving duties.
Statistics Canada reported last month that employment among mothers with schoolaged children had nearly returned to pre-shutdown levels. But the agency said the number of mothers working less than half their usual hours in September was still 70 per cent higher than before the pandemic in February.
Brail noted that many popular side hustles, such as mask-sewing and cooking, capitalize on what is traditionally treated as women’s unpaid domestic labour.