The Number of Americans Wanting To Switch Jobs Hits a 10-Year High (msn.com) 75
More Americans are looking to switch jobs than at any point in the past decade. In a cooling job market, that's a lot easier said than done. From a report: White-collar hiring continues to slow, but workers' restlessness to find new work is intensifying, new Gallup data show. More than half of 20,000 U.S. workers surveyed in November said they were watching for or actively seeking a new job. That's the largest share since 2015, eclipsing the so-called Great Resignation of 2021 and 2022, when millions of people quit jobs for better ones.
The result? Job satisfaction has fallen to its lowest level in recent years as employees feel more stuck -- and frustrated -- where they are, according to Gallup, whose quarterly surveys are widely viewed as a bellwether of workplace sentiment. Smaller raises and fewer promotions are spurring some of the discontent, workers say. So are cost-cutting moves and stepped-up requirements to be working in offices more often.
The result? Job satisfaction has fallen to its lowest level in recent years as employees feel more stuck -- and frustrated -- where they are, according to Gallup, whose quarterly surveys are widely viewed as a bellwether of workplace sentiment. Smaller raises and fewer promotions are spurring some of the discontent, workers say. So are cost-cutting moves and stepped-up requirements to be working in offices more often.
There are jobs to switch to? (Score:2, Informative)
There are actually jobs to switch to? A tech company I used to work for for offshored the entire department I was in. I was lucky and had a job lined up, but there are people who went from being full stack developers to currently doing Santa gigs at a local store. Pretty much, if the job doesn't involve a security clearance, or isn't something menial, it has been relocated to Hyderabad.
Re:There are jobs to switch to? (Score:5, Funny)
people who went from being full stack developers to currently doing Santa gigs at a local store.
It seems that being a fat neckbeard is not without its advantages.
Re:There are jobs to switch to? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are actually jobs to switch to?
To be fair, the article says that Americans want to switch jobs.
Doesn't say anything about them being successful in doing it.
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Job hopping doesn't require net new jobs. When you hop to a new job, you free up a vacancy at your old employer.
But unemployment is currently 4.1%, a near-record low. There are plenty of jobs available. The common refrain is that the standard measure of unemployment (U-3) doesn't include those who have given up. But U-6 does measure those not actively looking, and U-6 is also at a near record low.
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There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
As long as the methods are consistent, there's nothing wrong with measuring things with statistics. While the number may not match your perceived reality, its change over time will give a fairly accurate representation of what's going on.
Drive through most areas in US cities... Read subreddits about how hard it is to find work... Read about how H-1Bs have completely sunk IT...
Anecdotes aren't a good replacement for statistics.
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Your counter argument is "huuuuur. Koolaid drinker!" Logical. Also, why is my koolaid hot? That seems weird.
Do you care to actually address what I got wrong, in your mind? Or would you honestly prefer that the DoL start trolling Reddit posts and periodically driving through inner cities looking at empty buildings to determine the current labor utilization numbers?
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Base "unemployment rate" is a political football that means whatever they want it to mean. Same as "inflation rate" when you start to look at the basket of goods and "hedonics". "Deficit" is another laugher.
Re: There are jobs to switch to? (Score:2)
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they absolutely miss changes in price for things like horse buggy whips.
Sorta.
The basket of goods & services is updated every two years.
So there is a slight lag, but not much.
The long-term trend is fewer goods and more services. This increases inflation because services tend to rise in price faster than goods.
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There are a lot more people underemployed than (say) 10 years ago. Beyond that though they are "employed" either full time or part time. Anecdotally it also feels like there are fewer people working multiple jobs than 10 years ago. Wages are up some, but inflation is higher.
Small businesses have suffered since the pandemic, but there are a lot of factors at play there.
Ultimately the economy is pretty good, but that doesn't mean it is great for everyone.
Re:There are jobs to switch to? (Score:5, Informative)
There are a lot more people underemployed than (say) 10 years ago.
Citation needed.
The U-3 unemployment rate in December 2014 was 5.6%, vs 4.1% today.
The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes those employed part-time for economic reasons, was 12% in 2014, vs 7.3% now.
The economy is in much better shape today.
that doesn't mean it is great for everyone.
No economy, ever, anywhere in the world, has been "great for everyone".
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> The U-3 unemployment rate in December 2014 was 5.6%, vs 4.1% today.
> The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes those employed part-time for economic reasons, was 12% in 2014, vs 7.3% now.
I would have expected the unemployment rate of under-3 year olds and under-6 year olds to be higher than that.
Re: There are jobs to switch to? (Score:2)
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The economy is in much better shape today.
Who cares? Productivity has gone up a lot and wages have not. That means only the Owners are seeing any benefit to this supposedly "good" economy. America has roughly 300 million people who are not "owners" with a population of around 360 million.
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The reason el Bunko got the presidency is because he promised the "people" easy targets for their problems. He has no policies to improve their lives because he only knows how to destroy, look at his "companies". And any pseudo-policies he has proposed will only increase inflation and increase unemployment. But the Maggots will cheerfully claim he is succeeding because they hear him telling them he is. They are incapable of thinking outside the box he has them in.
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If only the Democrats had anti-war populists that thought of the workers back in 2016 when Donald first ran.
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There are plenty of jobs available. The common refrain is that the standard measure of unemployment (U-3) doesn't include those who have given up. But U-6 does measure those not actively looking, and U-6 is also at a near record low.
How do gig workers figure into the unemployment numbers? Do gig workers (some, maybe most, but not all) that are essentially underemployed artificially inflate the unemployment numbers? We're talking about millions of gig workers.
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How do gig workers figure into the unemployment numbers?
If they work more than 35 hours per week, they count as employed for U-3 and U-6.
If they work less than 35 hours per week but are satisfied with those hours, they also count as employed for U-3 and U-6.
If they work less than 35 hours per week but would prefer to work full time, they count as employed for U-3 but unemployed for U-6.
All of this is the same for a W-2 employee, 1099-contractor, gig worker, or self-employed.
Do gig workers ... artificially inflate the unemployment numbers?
No, not really. Not if you understand what the unemployment numbers mean.
70% of Uber driv
You're completely incorrect (Score:3, Interesting)
There are actually jobs to switch to? A tech company I used to work for for offshored the entire department I was in. I was lucky and had a job lined up, but there are people who went from being full stack developers to currently doing Santa gigs at a local store. Pretty much, if the job doesn't involve a security clearance, or isn't something menial, it has been relocated to Hyderabad.
Are you really this ignorant or are you a professional troll? There are plenty of jobs for full stack developers, just not as many as there were 2 years ago. We're in challenging times, but not "skilled devs becoming mall santas"-grade turmoil. If there's no jobs where you live, move...there are jobs where I live, just fewer and you have to work harder to get them. Everyone I know who was laid off found one...it's just the shittier devs spent a month or 2 looking vs 2 years ago when it would have been a
Re:You're completely incorrect (Score:4, Informative)
If there's no jobs where you live, move...
Unless you live in an RV, that's easier said than done. Disparities in real estate values or rent costs can also easily eat up any increase in salary you end up with by relocating, and that's assuming you've got the funds on hand to cover moving expenses in the first place. Also, people have these things called "relationships" and "families", where it might be a really tough sell to convince your significant other that they'll need to give up being able to easily visit their loved ones.
If you're not tied down to one place and can easily relocate for greener pastures, great, but not everyone is in a situation to do that.
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Is this a new thing...that "kids" are afraid to move away from home?
I mean...my parents moved to different states for my Dad's career...he was main breadwinner.
Our family lived away from relations for most of my life, till I was around mid teens and we moved back closer to "home".
But it was
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Is this a new thing...that "kids" are afraid to move away from home?
Yep, Millennials and Gen Z have a higher preference for staying near their families, at least according to everyone's favorite LLM. Anecdotally, since I'm a "Xennial", I know a lot of Millennials and yeah, they do like staying close to family.
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"they do like staying close to family"
Basements?
Don't go into tech in bad locations (Score:2)
If you decided to make a career in technology in rural Nebraska, well....that's about as smart as becoming a ski instructor in South Florida.
There's a common sense middle ground...no, you shouldn't relocate from your Chicago suburbs home because the market is presently cold, but if you moved to the middle of absolutely nowhere and want a career in technology, you're going to lo
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If there's no jobs where you live, move...
Unless you live in an RV, that's easier said than done. Disparities in real estate values or rent costs can also easily eat up any increase in salary you end up with by relocating, and that's assuming you've got the funds on hand to cover moving expenses in the first place. Also, people have these things called "relationships" and "families", where it might be a really tough sell to convince your significant other that they'll need to give up being able to easily visit their loved ones.
If you're not tied down to one place and can easily relocate for greener pastures, great, but not everyone is in a situation to do that.
This, as someone who's moved countries, it's not as simple as "today I'm going to move to Belfast". You arrive with no contacts and probably only a place to live for a few weeks. You're starting from scratch including finding a place to stay. I planned my move over 2 years but even then I ended up miles away from where I thought I would... Not that it's been bad, rather much of it totally unexpected. You realistically cant even apply for jobs until you arrive.
This isn't to scare anyone away from doing th
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"Just drive around most US cities... businesses that were there a few years back, even after 2020, are gone."
So blame business, not the government. Wait. I take that back.
Blame the government for not cracking down on PE firms doing leveraged buyouts. They then saddle the companies with unpayable debt, sell off the real estate and lease it back to them, and then slash "costs" to the point where no one wants to go there anymore. A few years of that and boom! Bankruptcy.
Box stores, restaurants, and more have b
Why would I move? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would a software engineer of all people have to move? If an employer can offshore work to Hyderabad, to people who aren't even native English speakers, why can't hire an American anywhere in the US?
It's more an indication that American employers don't want American employees - with their demand for decent treatment, fair wages, vacation time, etc... than anything else. Remember when coders were told, "We need someone with a college degree, who can communicate effectively..."? And then they turned around and fired entire departments and outsourced IT to consultants who could barely speak the English! Read the writing on the wall - American companies don't like Americans, period. In the same way the construction and agriculture are now dominated by Mexican immigrants, employers are now trying to claim - just as they did in agriculture and construction - that "Americans don't want to do these jobs". The truth is that employers don't want to pay American wages to American workers.
If you have to move to fill a tech position, you're working for a dinosaur. If the employer tells you they won't hire remote workers, it's more likely they're looking for a sucker, not an employee. Because it makes no sense to require RTO for American workers, but not their Indian counterparts.
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Don't worry. Many of those low-paying jobs available in agriculture, meat packing, roofing, and other unskilled and semi-skilled trades will be soon available to US citizens.
Of course, when they can't get "American" workers to do them, they'll be forced to raise wages, which means they'll be forced to raise prices to match. And pass them on, of course.
Couple that with massive across-the-board tariffs, and you have hyperinflation, coming your way any day now.
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No, they will use everyone in the immigration camps as unpaid labor since they won't be able to find a country to take them.
You must not have worked in software (Score:3)
Why would a software engineer of all people have to move? If an employer can offshore work to Hyderabad, to people who aren't even native English speakers, why can't hire an American anywhere in the US?
If your job could be outsourced to India, it would have been already. They have just as much of a talent shortage there. If you can do your job with minimal human contact...well, you're not doing high end work. If you were a professional software engineer, you'd know that 90%+ of your time is not writing code, but figuring out what to write...meeting with stakeholders, verifying code, checking requirements, designing systems that integrate well. Modern software engineering is very high touch....some low
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It's not so much a downturn as a long-overdue correction. Teams are absurdly oversized, software quality is abysmal, and infrastructure costs are out-of-control.
The worst part, by far, is that we all know this but rather than address the issues, we circle the wagons and hope no one figures out just how rotten things really are. I've seen teams take months to make minor corrections to a stored procedure. I very recently watched a dba refuse to show any parts of the db schema to the technical steering comm
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yes buddy, of course, tens of thousands of layoffs and people who have been looking for months, but hey, rando on slashdot says otherwise, that even "young recent grads" can find jobs in Jobland where he lives
fuck you.
As of Aug, the rate was 3.2% (Score:4, Informative)
yes buddy, of course, tens of thousands of layoffs and people who have been looking for months, but hey, rando on slashdot says otherwise, that even "young recent grads" can find jobs in Jobland where he lives
fuck you.
Google it, the unemployment rate for software engineers is single digits. The most recent number I saw was 3.2%. Yeah...everyone I know found a job. One guy I know, who was in his early 20s and had no education and mediocre past experience had to look for 2 months and went on a LOT of interviews and got rejected a fuckton...yeah...shitty experience...but he's working...and in fact if he didn't live in a shitty shitty area, he would have found something faster, I wager. All these layoffs were in the context of a massive surplus of job listings in previous years.
Things suck now...but skilled software engineers not being able to find anything but a mall Santa gig?...that's an exaggeration.
I started my career in the MIDDLE of our biggest downturn in the modern era (the dot com bust). It SUUUUCKED....but even then...yeah, I was 23, laid off, and found a job in a week...and I lived in a shitty area. I spammed the entire metro area for every job and got turned down a LOT...but yeah...do that and you'll find something. It sucks...it lacks dignity...but it's life. The jobs I got?...eh...probably should have looked longer to get a better one, but they were in my field, on shitty projects from well-known employers....the same can be said of the dozens of people I know who were laid off this year. They found "something" from some company I had heard of in their chosen profession...not mall Santa.
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I work for an agency. I've had to change clients in the past when contracts ended. they had a pipeline of jobs and I'd usually be starting with the new client early and the previous client was grateful they were allowed to cancel the contract with no penalty.
2024, I've been assigned to two clients this year and I'm back on the bench. I'm lucky though. 2 people were laid off because they couldn't find projects for them for over 2 months. The company is still hiring but only for "mature" contracts for very sp
Re: There are jobs to switch to? (Score:2)
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There are actually jobs to switch to?
No, and that's precisely why so many *wanted* to switch but had not.
On top of that, companies are pushing people to quit through quiet layoffs with tactics like RTO and PIP, making more people wanting to leave.
Likely most people (Score:1)
Not sure about that (Score:2)
Most jobs I've had it was really quite a while before I thought of looking for something else. In fact more often than not I was pulled away not because I was looking but because someone reached out with an opportunity that I liked even more than what I was doing.
I feel like most other people I worked at were in a pretty similar state, where they were reasonably OK with what they were doing and didn't really feel like looking.
There are for sure some companies that I could see where a lot of people would wa
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Yeah let's go ahead and slap some tariffs on everything, that will certainly help people
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At least it will make the complete idiots feel better for a little while. After that, they will just have to look for somebody that obviously sabotaged the great leader's plan. Might even be a Stab-in-the-back myth ("Dolchstosslegende") in the making?
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At least it will make the complete idiots feel better for a little while.
"For a while" = "Until they figure out (again) what tariffs actually do."
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Naa, the will not figure that out. Too dumb. They will just see the effects and then look for somebody to blame besides the one responsible. Because doing so would mean they would also have to admit they made a really stupid choice.
Re:Best Economy Evar (Score:4, Informative)
More fabulous Bidenomics! OMG ook at geedeepee herp derp!
Here is how things stand now [tumblr.com]. Let us know how things look in two years.
There is obviously more going on (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing that I've found, employers tend to give smaller raises to current employees, but then will pay new hires more money "to be competitive". When you find that the new hire who knows less than you do, with less experience than you do, is getting paid more money, many people will look for a new job. It's been a very common issue that you won't get paid the best if you stay at one company, because employers will often take their employees for granted. For those who stay for 10+ years, chances are you are getting underpaid, unless you are an executive.
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At a Fortune-50 I worked at about 10 years ago, the joke we had around the information systems department was "in order to get a substantial raise, you need to leave ${COMPANY} for 6 months to a year, and then get hired back at the salary you actually deserve."
I did part A (leave), don't intend to do part B. Getting out of there made me realize that the only thing going for me there was the job security - I could have lit the place on fire and still had a job that I didn't enjoy, and wasn't paid enough to
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It's still an issue where those with the experience and knowledge are pushed out because management doesn't pay those with the experience and knowledge more than the new hires. So, you get to see how underpaid you are now, that doesn't make it right that we need to find a new job at a new company to get properly compensated.
I work in the public sector and it's the same. (Score:2)
Title.
Then do so (Score:3)
The only way to make employers treat people better is if they cannot get any reasonable workers anymore, die and then new companies take their place.
time to go union! (Score:1)
time to go union!
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You do know that there is no "tech workers union", don't you? If you work for a smaller company, it's more difficult to get people to unionize as well.
In my small world (Score:2)
Architectural Engineers are in tremendous demand. They are also quitting the field in record numbers, primarily in search of higher pay. An engineer with ~3 years experience can make $90-100k, and with 10 years you can hit about $140k. But, so can a realtor or many other fields. We had bad year, but if we found 10% of our workforce in good engineers we would find a way to make it work.
Make a plan, get out while you can (Score:4, Interesting)
Not much to look forward to here.
US Wages are going to come down over time. It has to happen. I don't see any way to stop it. Look at the graph of productivity vs. wages below.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=11CrY&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=exported-chart&utm_campaign=myfred_referrer
There's been a disconnect between productivity and wages for some time now. This will continue until wages in the US revert to the worldwide mean.
As a result of this. the standard of living in the USA will decrease, there will be more econonic inequality. The only way you'll win is to do one or more of the following:
1. Start and run a successful business,
2. Liquidate your assets and move to a lower cost country.
It's not a good time to be an employee.
The incoming political regime thinks that tariffs can isolate the USA from the rest of the world, but they are not thinking about one small detail which would be a fly in their ointment:
People have feet. If living in the USA becomes tougher than moving to another part of the world, smart people are going to do so.
There's going to be a big battle for workers worldwide in the next couple of decades due to declining birth rates. Countries are going to try creating things to hang on
to the people they have. The United States already does this with a "Citizenship Exit Tax", but here will be countries which won't help the United States enforce this as they will need the workers too.
It's all going to get very interesting, but I probably won't live to see it unfold fully as I'm already retired.
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People have feet. If living in the USA becomes tougher than moving to another part of the world, smart people are going to do so.
The problem there though is that American workers are often locked in to the US economy, even if they don't realize it. Few countries will let you temporarily relocate to their country to look for employment - you need a job offer before you arrive or you'll be turned away at customs. The people who get around that requirement are the ones with 8-figure balances in their bank accounts, but they weren't having a hard time getting employment anyways and weren't in position for the Trump economic plan to hu
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Start and run a successful business
Pooled money will ruin your business if your business is profitable enough to get their attention. It is THEIR possible profits that you are taking from.
Liquidate your assets and move to a lower cost country
Have you ever tried to emigrate? No place that is desirable wants you... but even worse, you have to have money to even start the process.
It's all going to get very interesting, but I probably won't live to see it unfold fully as I'm already retired.
Almost everyone on this site will be dead and buried before it gets as bad as it can get... we should still try to stop it. I care about other people too, not just myself.
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Dual citizen here.
A lot of countries will grant a passport based on ancestry.
It is prudent to take advantage of this if you can.
High interest rates exist to kill jobs (Score:1)
This is by design. The idea is we all get fired and we're forced to take lower paying jobs after blowing through our savings. That in turn is supposed to reduce demand which forces companies to cut prices.
It's a nice idea but unless you have strong competitive markets it doesn't happen. Companies can rai
Pay and position (Score:2)
If you stay long enough without changing the nature of your work, you should - correctly - hit a cap. A particular role is only so valuable, no matter how long you've been doing it. If you wouldn't pay somebody a thousand dollars per hour, then there must be a limit. So what is that limit?
As far as promotions go, lots of large corporations ended up with bloated middle management by promoting on the basis of tenure, and now the sickle is slicing the heads off of that group, and it's not pretty.
Most companies
Probably a bit of financial desperation (Score:2)
and people have the audacity (Score:1)
Does that include wishful ex-pats-to-be? (Score:2)
Hence those folks looking to get away from the upcoming dismantling of the US might be pushing those numbers of job seekers up. The question
Hold On (Score:2)
They hung a sign up in our town
"If you live it up, you won't live it down"
So she left Monte Rio, son
Just like a bullet leaves a gun
With her charcoal eyes and Monroe hips
She went and took that California trip
Oh, the moon was gold, her hair like wind
Said, "don't look back, just come on, Jim"
Oh, you got to hold on, hold on
You gotta hold on
Take my hand, I'm standing right here, you gotta hold on
Well, he gave her a dimestore watch
And a ring made from a spoon
Everyone's looking for someone to blame
When you share m