Welcome to the United States of Side Hustles

For burnt-out 9-to-5ers looking to start something of their own, there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that it's never been easier to start a side hustle. Unfortunately, that's also the bad news.

The white-collar job market is tough. Luckily, we live in an era when a stable internet connection and a couple of hundred bucks are all it takes to start your own business. Yet, while side hustles are increasingly seen as a viable path to financial stability — especially given the power of AI — success is far from guaranteed.

In the latest piece of our "Future of Capitalism" series, we explore how hustle culture is changing the way many side hustlers are thinking about and approaching work. Many who spoke with Business Insider say that while starting is relatively easy, making something that lasts is not, and the data shows that the field is crowded.

Michael Satterlee, a teenager from Clifton Park, New York, is an aspirational case. He started his e-commerce company, Cruise Cup, from his childhood home with only about $500.

His products are all 3D printed, and his top seller — which went viral on Instagram in 2025 — is a can holder that fits two standard 12-ouncers. All he needed to get started was a $300 3D printer and a Shopify account that he maintains for $30 a month.

"Most of the tools you need are free," Satterlee told Business Insider. "Social media is free. You can get hundreds of millions of views without paying for distribution."

But the low barrier to entry that benefited Satterlee also means stiffer competition.

According to a 2025 SurveyMonkey study that sampled 3,573 full-time workers in the US, 37% of respondents have a side hustle, while another 35% are considering pursuing one. Younger workers are pivoting to side gigs harder than any generation, flooding the market.

Data from a 2025 Bankrate survey of 2,616 adults shows more than 30% of millennials and Gen Zers said they supplement their incomes with a side job, far outpacing their Gen X, and boomer counterparts. From 2017 to 2025, Bankrate's survey shows that participation in side hustles rose from 19% of US adults to 27% in 2025.

All told, the data shows that more than 60 million Americans are side hustling in some way.

It's a crowded field. While the phenomenon may be redefining work and the path to wealth creation, for every success story, there are ample warnings to those thinking about jumping off the corporate ladder.

Low bar, high stress

Whether for a product, a service, or TikTok content, everyone's got an idea. Although it's easier than ever to start something, that hardly guarantees success. And successes that do materialize don't happen overnight, and they can be hard to maintain.

Michela Allocca, a full-time personal finance content creator who began posting on Instagram in 2019, said it took her two years before she started earning consistent income from her content creation business. Now, seven years in, getting started isn't the challenge; it's staying relevant in an increasingly crowded market.

"There is significantly more competition now," Allocca said. "It has skyrocketed, and there are so many other people making similar templates or similar styles of content."

If you're after longevity, you can never rest, she said. In a market where algorithms shift, platforms evolve, and new creators emerge daily, visibility is fleeting. The same forces that make it easy to start also make it easy to be replaced. To avoid that fate, it's essential to stay up to date with industry trends and be willing to adjust your strategy in real time.

Competition looks different in every side-hustle segment. While Allocca is going up against a growing number of creators online, entrepreneurs in e-commerce face a different squeeze: the erosion of the middleman.

Alex Yale, a former consultant who now runs two e-commerce brands, said the pandemic-era boom attracted a wave of sellers who sourced products from Chinese factories and resold them under private labels on Amazon. But increasingly, those factories have begun selling directly to consumers.

"The factories are saying, 'Why am I selling to you and letting you make a profit? I'll just open my own Amazon account and sell directly,'" said Yale. The result: price compression and copycat competition. If you see success importing a product from China without any patent or IP protection, within months, "they'll be selling it 20% to 30% cheaper."

The broader message, experts say, is that easier doesn't mean easy.

"The messaging of, 'It's easier to start a business than find a job right now.' No. I mean, both are hard," said Dan Schawbel, the managing partner of Workplace Intelligence, a labor market research firm.

Outlasting the competition

A career was once a decadeslong or even lifelong prospect. Hustle culture is different.

If the current era of capitalism is abolishing the barriers to entry to start a business, the future of work may be characterized by short stints and constant iteration.

The low cost of starting up a modern-day business allows prospective entrepreneurs to experiment without incurring much risk, and experimentation may be the key to success in a hyper-competitive environment.

"You can try different things," Matt Barrie, the founder and CEO of freelance marketplace Freelancer.com, told Business Insider. "Many hustlers don't just have one company; they have four, five, six. Three or four might not work, but that's the nature of hustling."

In essence, starting a business can be approached like any other investment, with diversification the most durable formula for success.

William Butterton is a full-time electrical engineer and serial side-hustler. He started buying and installing ATMs and vending machines with about $2,500 upfront, in order to earn passive income. He told Business Insider that his philosophy is to start wide and then filter down once something starts clicking.

But Butterton's other pursuits also include flipping Pokémon and sports cards on live-selling platform Whatnot. He says he's going to keep trying new endeavors, as long as he doesn't have to sacrifice his current job security or family time. One day, he aspires to run his own business full-time, but he's in no rush.

In a crowded landscape, experimentation may get you in the game. Consistency keeps you there.

"You have to be willing to post a video that gets zero views, then one view, then 100 views — and do that a thousand times," Satterlee, the creator of the 3D printed Cruise Cup, said.

Allocca agrees. Most people, she said, underestimate the grind required to break through.

"If you look at any successful creator in 2026, most of them have been posting multiple times a day, every day, for three or four years," she said. "It only looks like an overnight success from the outside."