Duggar Fans Ponder: Does Josiah Duggar Even Have A Job? Because It Sure Doesn’t Look Like It

Here are the facts as fans know them:

• Jim Bob Duggar has a successful career in commercial real estate.
• TLC pays the family around $40,000 per episode.
• Most of the kids have jobs that were set up by their dad.

And here are the theories that fans are putting out there:

• Jim Bob is controlling and decides how money is distributed.
• Josiah doesn’t work at all, for reasons that are unclear.

Fans of the family also know that a few of the brothers worked together at a car dealership years ago, but it was never clear how much work they did or what they were paid. People have wondered what the family is up to ever since then.

The discussion pivoted to Josiah last week after he shared photo after photo to the Instagram account he and his wife share.

In a thread on Reddit, one fan commented, "So Josiah doesn’t work either? Cool. He’s always on social media during the day just hanging out. Another non working Duggar couple. How nice life must be."

Ooouuch. After that, another person asked how the family makes it work, noting, "Surely TV and Instagram aren't enough to live off?"

That's when two others jumped in with their own thoughts. One said, "You'd be surprised how much influencers and people on basic cable make," while another added, "Jim Bob also has several passive income streams – rental property, rent from a cell tower."

However, the plot really thickened when a third person added, "Tv can’t be enough to live off when your dad takes all the money and gives you a tiny slice. My guess is they hardly make money from Instagram. Lauren has done maybe one influencer deal and they don’t get the large deals with brands."

In and of itself, this whole exchange is pretty fascinating. There are a lot of brands out there that are willing to pay legitimate influencers on Instagram a whole lot of money. Joe Gagliese runs Viral Nation, which is an agency just for influencers. He and his cofounder, Mathew Micheli, spent a week studying various social media platforms and then started their own business. He says, "Our first client outside of the hockey space was a Vine star named Ray Ligaya, who actually works for us now. We signed a deal with him and Post cereal, and two weeks later, one client turned into 16. Within our first year, we signed about $500,000 in endorsement deals for influencers, and pretty soon, we had signed 700 influencers."

The agency is super lucrative. "Four years ago, Viral Nation was doing about $1.2 million annually, and last year we grew to $4.5 million. This year, the business is on track to make $20 million in deals."

He also says that you don't need a giant account to do well. "A micro-influencer, which is someone that has 10,000 to 50,000 followers, is actually pretty valuable. They used to only pick up a couple hundred bucks, but today, they get a minimum of a few thousands dollars a post."

With this kind of math, it's possible that Josiah and Lauren are leveraging their own Instagram account in a big way. The pair have more than 777,000 followers on the platform.

Joe Gagliese also put out some more math, saying, "Influencers with up to 1 million followers can get $10,000 [per post], depending on the platform, and 1 million followers and up, you’re getting into territory where they can charge $100,000. Some can even get $250,000 for a post! Especially if the content is on Youtube and the influencer is in the gaming industry."

This is a lot of power for one couple to have through social media for sure. The Duggar Family account is even larger, with at least 1.3 million followers. With that many people following their posts, it's definitely conceivable that Instagram and social media are doing more work for the family than one might initially suspect.

The details of the family's net worth haven't been revealed, and no one is sure how much Jim Bob makes with his various streams of income. There's also not a lot of information out there about what the families make through their jobs at car dealerships and the like.

And in terms of Josiah, one could even argue that being in the show and putting his family on social media is a job in and of itself. The photos are digital content, and there's clearly a sizable audience who are happy that the content is being produced.

So it could just be that this entire conversation is built around older ideas of what it means to have a job, anyway. Plenty of people can and do survive in this world quite nicely off just their Instagram accounts. It might be frustrating for some, especially if it doesn't seem quite fair, but it's a consequence of the world most of us happily participate in. The internet can definitely be used to your advantage if you know how to … and it just might be that Josiah definitely knows how to.