Americans aren’t as restless in their jobs as they were a couple of years ago.
Numerous surveys show that fewer U.S. adults are currently seeking to leave their roles, compared with the job-switching frenzy of the pandemic years.
The current mood is a turn from recent years, when a red-hot labor market helped spur a wave of quits among American workers, or the “great resignation.”
So different is the current mood that some labor economists have dubbed it the “big stay.”
Other data suggest job satisfaction is rising, and in interviews, formerly job-hopping workers say they’re content with the balance they’ve struck in the positions they have.
Those who are tempted to make a jump face a tightening job market and shrinking pay premium for switching jobs, federal data show.
A poll from April shows that 35% of U.S. adults plan to look for another job in the second half of this year, down from 49% a year ago, according to Robert Half, the workplace consulting and recruiting firm.
Of 1,000 workers polled, 77% said they were happy with their jobs and 85% reported a good work-life balance.
“People feel really satisfied with their compensation and they are very happy with their flexibility, which are two big drivers,” says Dawn Fay, Robert Half’s operational president.
Another recent study of 2,800 working adults by MetLife found 73% were satisfied at work, up from 69% a year ago.
The number of U.S. workers who quit their jobs in one month peaked at 3% in April 2022, according to Labor Department data, prompting many employers to boost salaries, give more time off and offer flexible schedules in an attempt to retain talent.
Since then the U.S. rate of quitting has drifted below prepandemic levels to 2.2%, where it has held steady so far this year.
The lower quits rate comes alongside a white-collar job slowdown and shriveling pay for new hires.
Two summers ago, job switchers got a median pay bump of 8.5% for making the leap, compared with a 5.9% raise for those who stayed at their jobs, according to the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s wage tracker.
As of March, job switchers were commanding a median 5.2% jump in pay, while job stayers were getting 4.5%.
“It lines up with where confidence in the labor market is at this point, and that makes sense because the hiring rate is slowing,” says Brett Ryan, a senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities.
Job postings on hiring website Indeed have steadily fallen over the past year, making the prospect of jumping ship to a new company harder, says Svenja Gudell, Indeed’s chief economist.
“There’s just less out there,” Gudell says. “Employers don’t have to work as hard to attract talent. Wage growth has cooled, so you’re less likely to be enticed to switch jobs. There’s a little bit of that ‘I’m gonna sit pretty here for a while.’”
Too clever is dumb; three clever is dumbfounded.
2wIf the average employee's job-seeking experience requires 1,250 job applications to generate one job offer, and if each job application requires five minutes to submit... can this average (45 hours per week) employee complete all these job applications during paid, company time over their period of "two weeks notice"? Or, if not, approximately how many job applications can the employee expect to be forced to complete on their own dime-time?