CHICAGO — After years of endless-seeming work and little sleep, Muyiwa Jaiyeola, 33, shares these tips on surviving two jobs: Never watch the clock. Don't ever miss any buses. Lost travel time means lost sleep. And keep reminding yourself that you will catch up on sleep on weekends, and that you have to keep going to earn money to pay the bills.

When Jaiyeola pulled two all-night shifts at his stockroom job in late August, for example, that meant sleeping two hours in the afternoon after leaving Sears, and then two more in the morning before going back to his salesman's job. He hoped to nap during his break in the middle of the night.

"When you are determined to do it, you do it," said Jaiyeola, who puts in a 40-hour week as a salesman at a Sears, Roebuck and Co. store and then works another 20 hours in the stockroom of a Gap Inc. store.

Nearly 7.6 million Americans straddle two or more jobs and must find time to work, sleep and live somewhat contorted lives in a very full 24 hours.

Like Jaiyeola, most workplace moonlighters do it because they want or need extra money to pay bills, according to a 2001 U.S. Labor Department survey. Less than a third take on the added burden because they enjoy it or want to try another job.

Those who specifically need the extra work to pay bills are most often women who take care of their families, and divorced, widowed or separated workers.

Moonlighters' share of the American work force climbed to 6.5 percent in the mid-1990s and has been shrinking ever since, reaching about 5.3 percent in recent months, government figures show.

One possible reason why there are fewer moonlighters is that people have simply quit the job market, frustrated over the lack of good-paying jobs. Citing the most recent government statistics, the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, said workers' wages fell by just under 1 percent in the last two years, when adjusted for inflation.

"We think there is a missing labor force," said Larry Mishel, an economist and the head of the Economic Policy Institute.

But for Jaiyeola, who was born in Chicago and grew up in Nigeria, there wasn't any thinking about how much his second job would pay.

He only knew five years ago when he took the stockroom job that he needed money to pay tuition and other bills, he said. The two jobs have, indeed, helped pay the bills.

However, the workload forced him to stretch out his days at Northeastern Illinois University, from which he graduated last year, into eight years of studies.

"If I had to do it again, I wish I had a better plan," he explained.

For the time being, Jaiyeola, who is also saving money to bring his mother to the United States from Nigeria, sees no end to his two-job dance and all that comes with it.

Nolasco Gonzalez, 36, struggles with a similar time bind.

At night he cleans buildings for $9.25 an hour at Northwestern University's Evanston, Ill., campus. His wife works with him on the nightly janitorial crew. And in the daytime, he earns $8.25 an hour in a computer repair store in Chicago.

Averaging only about four hours' sleep between jobs, he regularly takes vitamins, convinced they give him extra energy.

"Two or three times a week I am tired, but what can I do?" asked Gonzalez, who studied archeology in Mexico.

He dreams of owning his own computer repair business or having one job, a better-paying one that gives him more "dignity" than cleaning rugs at night.

But, he added: "I have dignity because I am working for my family. I want my two children to have money for things and to do well in school. I don't want them to live near gangs."

If it is late in the afternoon and there are no customers, he sometimes takes a quick nap in the back of the store, he said. "The owner is very understanding," he explained.

Richard Manera, 38, has also learned how to adjust to working more than one job.

A shift supervisor at a downtown Starbucks, his No. 1 career is acting, singing and dancing.

That means sometimes starting work at 4:45 a.m. at Starbucks on a day when theater rehearsals will run well into the evening. But Manera has grown used to managing such challenges.

Because theater work is temporary and unpredictable, he has relied on Starbucks for the last 12 years as his employment base. The job offers him flexibility. He said he can change his hours or find others to fill in for him at the coffee shop when he has stage jobs.

There have been times, he admits, when he has felt overstretched and considered quitting his coffee-shop job. But colleagues and customers have talked him out of doing so.

"They say to me, 'You are so good in the show, and you are so good here, too,' " he said.

Every so often Irene Diaz's daughters ask why she can't spend more time taking them shopping or to the movies. Diaz, a divorcee caring for three teenagers, replies that she has to work two jobs and put in a full day so they can have money.

Mornings she works as a home healthcare aide, earning $7.50 an hour, and afternoons she is an organizer at the Pilsen Alliance, where she gets $10 an hour. Not too long ago, she had a $6-an-hour job, cleaning banks in the northern suburbs. "It was a very difficult job," she said with a frown.

She, too, dreams of holding just one job — a job that lets her plan for the future. As it is, her earnings "are just enough to live on," she said.

Stadium attendant Tony Martin quickly learned an important lesson about his second job: He couldn't wear flimsy shoes. His feet hurt too much when he dragged home around midnight, having gotten up at 6 a.m. to get ready for his daytime job, working with teenagers.

"Thank God I'm in great physical shape," said the 48-year-old. "I do a lot of standing, a lot of walking, and that works on your legs and your feet. You gotta make sure you have the correct shoes."

Martin, who recently married and has a 12-year-old stepson, started working two jobs 11 years ago when he was raising four children alone.

Now, a second job is a habit as well as a necessity. He's come to depend on his paycheck from working night and weekend events at United Center or U.S. Cellular Field to help his older children pay their college tuition.

His weekday job, running an outreach program, covers the mortgage on his home in Glenwood, Ill., his car payment, gas and electric bills. There's not a lot left over.

His new wife, a medical secretary at a hospital, is trying to convince him to cut back.

"We recently joined a church, but we haven't been able to worship together because either she's working or I'm working," he said. "We made an agreement: I'm going to pick one night out of the week where I'm not going to work at all."

Years ago, when his second job was new, he looked forward to working because he loves sports. At United Center, he's a "floor captain" who unlocks and inspects 42 suites — covering half a penthouse floor — stocking them with programs and turning on TV monitors.

He figures he walks eight miles during a game or event, circling the suites, making sure ticket-holders are comfortable. Then it's time to see everybody out and lock up again.

"I kind of miss my family because I've been gone all day. A lot of times, when I get in, my wife's asleep. My (step) son, he tries to wait up for me but he can't do it because I'm gone so long. It's got to the point now where I hate to see an overtime game, extra innings or a rain delay," he said. "The money is secondary. I want to go home."