Maths and the Side Hustle Economy

This year we have seen huge numbers of people being furloughed or losing their income completely due to COVID-19 restrictions, and all of our regular socialising has been snatched away, leaving us a lot of free time as a nation. As such, record numbers of adults and even entrepreneurial teens have been exploring additional income streams.

Last week you’ll remember we talked about statistics, so I’m going to give you a few here:

• In the first six months of the 2020-2021 financial year, Etsy sales were up 71% as people handcrafted items to sell to supplement their income.

• Did you know the humble side hustle accounts for £72 billion every year in the UK, which is approximately 3.6% of our GDP? 

• A huge proportion of people with side hustles are adults under 45. 

• In the North East of England, 30% of adults have a side hustle.

• Side hustles make up an average of 20% of a person’s income, providing essential funds to support individuals and their families.

But, did you know that your side hustle is the reason you’re now doing more maths than you’ve ever done since you sat your GCSE maths back in school?

Accounting

When you run a business, this is indeed the most obvious application for Maths – recording your income and expenditure, your profits or your losses. You’ll also need to calculate how much to set aside for things like tax, national insurance contributions, and pension contributions so you won’t be caught short when the time comes to file your tax returns.

Making products

Making a physical product can include anything from, weight and measure, volume and capacity, and shape and space. This is especially true for home bakers, resin artists, carpentry and anything at all that is made by hand.

Pricing up products

The goal of business is to make a profit, and so you’ll be working out the costs of raw materials, the cost of your time, packaging, advertising, the website you sell from (if you have one) and any other factors that could bump up the cost, finishing this process by adding a mark-up.

Social Media Engagement Monitoring

If you are using social media or digital marketing to advertise, you’ll likely be hung up on your engagement figures. Knowing how many people are seeing and engaging is imperative, as it shows how effective your marketing is or whether you need to make some changes. You’ll need to be able to understand what the percentage increases and decreases mean, and you’ll need to use them to modify your marketing.

As you can see, maths gets around whether we like it or not. All we can do is practice and make sure we keep our skills relevant. 

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