Side Hustle Business Boom: Why Millennials Want to Go Full-Time

The side hustle business has outgrown its old reputation as a spare-cash experiment. According to QuickBooks' State of Side Hustles survey of three thousand U.S. adults, the average side hustler now earns $104 an hour, a figure the report sets against the $37.02 national average hourly wage recorded by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That contrast explains why nearly half of millennial hustlers now describe their gig as a future company rather than a temporary top-up: the economics of a side hustle business keep improving, and the exit from the nine-to-five looks closer than it once did.

The money is not spread evenly across generations. Millennials report the highest monthly take, roughly twenty-two hundred dollars across about twenty hours of work, which comes to around one hundred thirteen dollars an hour. Gen Z logs fewer hours, about seventeen a month, for roughly eighteen hundred dollars, or close to one hundred seven dollars an hour, from a typical side hustle business. QuickBooks attributes the millennial edge partly to freelance and contract work: 27 percent of millennial side hustlers do that kind of work, compared with 17 percent of Gen Z, and contract gigs simply pay more than delivery runs. The best-paid categories skew toward skilled work. Bankrate's 2025 survey, summarized in an independent roundup of this year's survey data, found online sales at 15 percent of hustles and professional services like freelance writing and design at 14 percent, with food delivery and crafts at 9 percent each.

Ambition is running ahead of paperwork. Forty-six percent of millennial side hustlers say they hope to turn their side hustle business into a full-time company, and twenty-three percent have already registered one, according to the survey. Zoom out to all Americans and the picture shifts: a separate QuickBooks research report on entrepreneurship trends found that forty-seven percent of U.S. adults earned income from a side hustle in the past year, while only about one in five ever registered it as a formal business. Millions of people run a side hustle business that exists only in a banking app and a spreadsheet.

The registration gap

That informal majority is leaving money and protection on the table. Writing about the QuickBooks findings, financial planner John Pyron notes that unregistered hustlers miss out on liability protection, cleaner recordkeeping, and access to business financing, and that the paperwork tends to stay on the someday list until tax season forces the issue. His rule of thumb is to formalize once the side hustle business starts competing with the day job for your best hours, not after. The first formal steps are not dramatic: choosing a business structure, separating business and personal accounts, and getting an employer identification number where one applies. None of that requires quitting a day job, which is precisely why it so often waits.

The ninety-four-thousand-dollar question

Quitting still takes more than enthusiasm. Side hustlers told QuickBooks they would need about ninety-four thousand dollars a year from the gig to feel comfortable leaving full-time employment, and fewer than eleven percent reported clearing that bar last year. Even so, four in ten Americans plan to start a new business or side hustle to build wealth in the coming year, and one in four says a small business or side hustle has the highest return potential of any option this year. The appetite for building a side hustle business is real even when the math is sobering.

The honest version of the story is smaller and more useful than the hype. Bankrate's side hustle survey put average monthly earnings at $885 but the median at just $200, a spread that reflects a handful of high earners pulling the average upward. For most people, a side hustle business is a debt payment, an emergency fund, or a low-stakes way to test a skill, and it works best when it stays small long enough to prove it can grow. The survey data suggests the real trend is not everyone quitting their jobs; it is millions of workers keeping the day job while the side hustle business quietly gets serious.