According to the Collins dictionary, the term slashies, which literally means “multiple-earners”, comes from the slash sign we use to describe the different roles we take.
Are you one of those who find it difficult to answer when asked what your job is? You are not alone! In our age, the number of people who focus on a single job and specialize in that field has decreased. You no longer have to choose one of your interests, you can be a slashie too. When I say Slashie, I'm talking about those who have "Influencer/Entrepreneur/Designer" and similar "bio" that we encounter more and more frequently on Instagram.
informal
a person who gains income from more than one occupation
First used in Marci Alboher's book One Person/Many Careers, the term slashies, which according to the Collins dictionary means "multiple earners", comes from the slash sign we use to describe the different roles we take. Even though Slashies, or “multi-hyphenate” as it is mentioned in the book of the same name by the author Emma Gannon, is a term that has just entered our lives, I have probably been these people running around in our lives.
A 2019 survey by Bankrate found that nearly half of Americans are engaged in another income-generating job besides their core job. The time when Generation X finishes college starts a job at a company and specializes in a single subject for years disappears on the horizon. As understood in the same survey by Bankrate, 48 percent of millennials have more than one job, while this rate is only 39 percent for Gen X.
The fact that we can now turn almost any of our hobbies into a career where we can earn money encourages us to pursue our new interests and offers us the opportunity to develop ourselves in different areas. Today, when the norm has shifted from specialization to differentiation, technology and ease of access to information paved the way for slashies. The lines separating our dreams from our lives are not that thick anymore. We can start the career as a designer that we have always dreamed of by taking lessons from platforms such as Udemy or YouTube, or we can show our interest in cartoons by sharing our drawings on social media platforms. As long as we use our creativity and spare our time, what is the obstacle to transforming our interests into careers?
Is it better to work in many different jobs that are especially attractive to young people with the freedom and financial security it gives, namely to be Slashie, than to deal with one job and role? This is definitely debatable. Although the answer varies from person to person, from role to role, and from time to time, as Gannon points out, slashies seem to be present in our lives for a longer period of time.