The Simpsons has plenty of stock concepts and tropes that it revisits. Of course, any series that has lasted as long as The Simpsons should expect that to some degree. One of the most consistent has been to see Homer leaving his job at the Nuclear Power Plant and beginning some new career to the side.
But it's happened so often, it can be hard to tell just how many times he's done this. So, over the last thirty years, just how many jobs has Homer Simpson had?
HOMER'S USUAL WORK
For almost the entire course of the series, Homer has worked at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Some episodes have contradicted each other on the exact circumstances by which Homer was hired to the Plant in the first place. Season 3's "I Married Marge" revealed that he earned the job slightly before the birth of Bart. Others like season 8's "Homer's Enemy" have joked that he received the job as a reward for showing up to the plant on the first day it was open.
Homer was initially just a Nuclear Technician at the Power Plant. But in "Homer's Odyssey," the third episode of the show's first season, Homer was fired for negligence when he crashed an electric cart into a cooling vent. Homer actually almost committed suicide after failing to find other work, but instead became a passionate fighter for safety in Springfield. In an attempt to placate Homer and end the protests that were now targeting the Nuclear Power Plant, Mr. Burns offered Homer the position of Nuclear Safety Inspector. Since then, he's consistently worked there -- although he has been shifted around the plant into different positions over the years. Since then he's also been fired multiple times and even quit on occasion. But the job has provided a stable paycheck for Homer, and always seems willing to take him back whenever he finishes attempting another hair-brained scheme.
HOW MANY JOBS HAS HOMER HAD?
During an interview with MTV in 2007, Matt Groening and James L. Brooks claimed that Homer had "188 different jobs' over the course of the first four hundred episodes of the series. As of this writing, 679 episodes of the series have been released, meaning Homer's had almost an additional three hundred episodes to take on new jobs.
The recognized "Golden Age" of the series that took place between the first ten seasons of the show, accounting for the first 226 episodes of the series. In that time, Homer held roughly 80 different jobs and positions 0- which ranged from normal positions like a clerk at the Kwik-E-Mart all the way up to absurd ideas like Homer becoming an astronaut. This doesn't include gags where Homer actually just imagines what it would be like to take on a ridiculous idea. However, it does include roles he served in during the "Treehouse of Horror" episodes and anthology episodes that take place across various points in history.
The earlier seasons of the show featured less wacky adventures than the latter episodes, so there were fewer episodes centering around Homer ending up with a different and unexpected job. Later seasons have enjoyed pushing Homer into unexpected professions and seeing how he flounders. But the constant cartoonish status quo of The Simpsons means that by episode's end, Homer will have lost or given up that position so he could go back to his standard position at the Nuclear Power Plant. As of this writing, episodes Homer has had roughly 275 jobs.
Some episodes focus heavily on the new position he's been given and the enthusiasm he's thrown into it. Others make reference to sudden careers as gags -- such as Homer's casual confirmation that he used to work at Foot Locker when revealing he already has the uniform to be a soccer referee. He's been given massive awards for his work, including a Grammy Award. Notably, Homer has also had essentially the same job multiple times, such as his time as an actor or door-to-door salesman. He has also served in two branches of the United States military -- the Army and the Navy, in addition to becoming a criminal, including being at various points a carjacker, home burglar, multiple forms of a smuggler and even an accused kidnapper. As long as The Simpsons continue, Homer will continue to get more absurd and unexpected jobs.