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Quitting Your Job Won't Help You Get Paid More Money Right Now (bloomberg.com) 44

Here's one more reason to cling to a steady job: It doesn't pay to quit. From a report: Typically workers who snag a new position see higher pay bumps than those holding down the same job. But in February, median wage growth of 4.4% for job stayers surpassed a 4.2% gain for job switchers, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. The change, as measured by a three-month moving average, is yet another sign of a softening labor market. White collar workers have been clinging to their jobs in the face of widespread layoffs and workplace reductions. Last month, employers announced the fastest pace of job cuts since 2020, when factoring in government job losses. And now an oversupply of job seekers means workers are having to settle for smaller pay bumps, said Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

"That certainly sounds like a big slackening of the job market," Cappelli said. It's a major reversal from the "Great Resignation" a few years ago, when workers left their jobs at unprecedented rates, demanding more benefits and higher pay from employers. At a peak in July 2022, workers who got new jobs saw their wages grow by a whopping 8.5% compared to 5.9% for those who stayed loyal to their company, Atlanta Fed data show.

Quitting Your Job Won't Help You Get Paid More Money Right Now

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  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @12:51PM (#65260711) Homepage Journal

    Collect a paycheck while you go to interviews. Jump ship when you get a better offer.

    • upvote! This is an aways has been the best advice. Furthermore, in a soft market, if you do not have a job you are at a disadvantage to someone who does have a job and is looking. You look less attractive if you are unemployed and looking. Why? Great employees always have options and are are almost never unemployed. The employer sentiment is that there's a reason someone is unemployed and they typically take the view that it's due to some fault in the perspective employee. Like it or not, that's just
      • You look less attractive if you are unemployed and looking.

        Now that an interview takes three days, I don't see how to job hunt while employed.

        • Now that an interview takes three days, I don't see how to job hunt while employed.

          Wow...I've never heard of such a thing....

          Where was this and for what kinda job?

          • Microsoft, had about six interviews over 3 days.

            • Even many smaller companies are aspiring for 6 interviews now.

              I applied to a large number of jobs last year, more than I want to say. Some of them were fairly low-stakes. These days 3 interviews seems to be par, 4 if you count the initial phone screen. The fun part is when they want you to do tests and quizzes that take hours by themselves, before they even think about interviewing you.

              If you haven't looked for a job in a few years, you'll be in shock when you do. Looking for a job is now a full-time job un

              • If you haven't looked for a job in a few years, you'll be in shock when you do. Looking for a job is now a full-time job unto itself.

                Yeah....when I've looked for jobs...I check my network of friends and work contacts....and usually have a phone call, maybe an in person too and get hired.

                Never had to take any "tests" or the like...

                I've done mostly admin type work, database heavy...some sys admin with Linux systems, etc.

        • You look less attractive if you are unemployed and looking.

          Now that an interview takes three days, I don't see how to job hunt while employed.

          Sorry boss. I have a personal appointment. Sorry I have to travel for a family emergency. etc. Maybe they'll catch on if you use the sick grandma excuse five or six times. But hopefully you won't need to.

          The 4-6 hour on Google's campus and 3 hours on Facebook's campus was the hardest sort of interview schedule for me to swing. Luckily there was a bit of a lull in my work and I rarely take time off so it's difficult for my employer to argue when I take a day or two off occationally.

          Google was pretty underst

    • Indeed. I always told my kids, "The best time to look for a job, is when you have a job."

      • Rules to live by (Score:4, Informative)

        by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @02:17PM (#65260951) Homepage Journal

        Collect a paycheck while you go to interviews. Jump ship when you get a better offer.

        A friend of mine put himself on the market every two years whether he wanted a job or not. In retrospect, I feel that was the most insightful and logical decision to be made at the time. As he pointed out, "nothing might come from it, but if they offer me my dream job there's no way I wouldn't take it".

        IIRC, he had some rule about not taking a new job unless it paid more than 15% higher than his current job, or some such.

        A further consideration is what you do *while* in your job. Always be looking for your next job, but that can also be within the same company. Talk to people at other departments, get a feel for what they do, listen in on a few staff meetings, and maybe volunteer to do some task or other that they are struggling with.

        In other words, be curious and don't be afraid to learn new things.

        When your department gets cut, lots of times you can switch to a different department. If you have shown that you understand the job requirements and get a recommendation from other people in that department, the company doesn't have to spend all the money needed to interview people.

        I started in the OS division, then switched to Networking, then switched to compilers, then became a consultant. Switching allowed me to keep my job for several more years than would have been otherwise possible, and having a background in multiple disciplines was useful in finding jobs at other companies.

        You're not actually working for the company, you're working for *yourself*. Lots of people don't understand this, the company can and will "unhire" you for any reason, or no reason. It might not even be your fault.

        Always be on the lookout for your next job. You take care of yourself.

        (And needless to say you don't go around trumpeting that opinion at the company. You can still have loyalty and still expect to continue working, but just know that your ultimate allegiance is to yourself.)

    • That is literally the point of the article. The entire job market and with it the economy is collapsing for a wide variety of unpleasant reasons we are pretending aren't happening ranging from rampant automation to King Orange of Donald screwing with fundamental aspects of our economy and government.

      We are in for a very very very rough ride and we are just pretending the shit isn't hitting the fan while it's splatters us in the face because we don't want to deal with the changes that are needed to fix t
    • Maybe people ARE doing that, and moving to jobs that allow WFH more.

      Social sciences aren't.
  • by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @12:55PM (#65260721)

    It's a meaningless statistic. Why? Because for the guys who *did* switch jobs *their* pay if they had stayed likely would NOT have gone up, which is why they switched jobs. The guys who left whose pay would not have gone up also helps the average amount that everyone else's -- who stayed -- went up.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by burtosis ( 1124179 )

      It's a meaningless statistic. Why? Because for the guys who *did* switch jobs *their* pay if they had stayed likely would NOT have gone up, which is why they switched jobs. The guys who left whose pay would not have gone up also helps the average amount that everyone else's -- who stayed -- went up.

      It’s not a meaningless statistic damn it! It’s supposed to scare you into not applying, keeping your head down, and not be to upset when those raises or even relatively fair pay never materializes. Now back to work, this dystopian hellscape isn’t going to build itself.

    • Re:meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @01:32PM (#65260817) Homepage

      While true, switching jobs for a 4% pay raise, is generally not a great career move, unless there are other more important factors. My personal threshold depends on how bad my current job is. If it's going great, then it would take something like a 25% increase to entice me to switch. If it's terrible, then I'd switch for a lateral or even a pay cut.

  • by Freedom Bug ( 86180 ) on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @01:25PM (#65260777) Homepage

    The averages are comparable, but the variances are wildly different, so the two numbers aren't comparable.

    Pretty much everybody who kept their job has a roughly equivalent salary this year as last.

    OTOH, many of the people who switched jobs have a very different salary. Some people doubled their salary. Some people who lost a high paying job are flipping burgers to keep food on the table.

    People *voluntarily* switching jobs got a good pay jump. People *involuntarily* switching jobs didn't.

  • The green thing in the middle of the blue thing on a map is an island.

  • Posting because every time I see an article about how you shouldn't switch jobs, or how my employer won Employer of the Year, while I am at work, the paranoid 1984 part of me wonders if my employer is doing a MITM attack on my browser and inserting propaganda.

    • by ack154 ( 591432 )

      In a round-about way, you're not completely wrong. Many of those "best company for _____ of YEAR" awards are based on self-nominations from the companies. You'd have to read the details of some particular award, but for a lot of them, your company is doing the legwork of applying based on whatever criteria the award has defined. Doesn't mean they haven't earned it or are evil because of it or anything... but it also doesn't always mean they were hand-picked out of the blue by some external entity because of

    • The corpocracy is aligned in their interests and well represented in the media. They don't need to explicitly collude to spread similar messages because almost all of these companies, especially in tech, think the same way and hold similar values.

  • by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @02:21PM (#65260967)

    I make enough money to get by and weather the occasional storms, and my workplace treats us all above average. We work hybrid (coming into the office at all is stupid, but it could be worse), and our productivity is measured by our end-product rather than our lines of code.

    However, we all make below industry average salaries. At one point, I quit this job to take a 35% pay increase elsewhere. I found out within a few days that my new job sucked. Bad. So I quit, got my old job back at my old pay, and have now been there for 24 years. There was even a long, multi-year stretch around the time of the great recession where my employer was in such a financial bind that we got no pay increase at all. But I stayed anyway, and it turned out to be a good decision. My employer's finances eventually improved, and the pay raises started flowing again.

    There comes a time where you have enough money to get by, and being treated like a human being is at least as important as how large the paycheck is. I'm close enough to retirement (yes, my job still provides for retirement) and having my house paid off that working from home so I can be with my wife and be a large part of my kids' growth is more important than large pay increases.

  • by jrnvk ( 4197967 )

    Not with *that* attitude!

  • The facts: Very slightly more people quitting their Job right now will earn less than those who stay in their job.

    That is WAY OFF what the headline says.
  • But since America is moving toward socialism, it's better to think in terms of self-employment anyway. Let's see how fucking expensive we can make everything.

    • But I disagree that most people would lump fascist collectivism and the destruction of individuality to create strictly hierarchical authoritarian class system as a form of "socialism".

      • He must be one of those guys that insists that the Nazis were socialists. I wondered where they hung out.

        • When we're not at your mom's, we're checking on you here. We know that when you stop posting here, you must be playing outside, or napping. When you're not there, you know what we do with her. We're all still betting on which one of us is your daddy. There're just too many guys that we cannot get in contact with to actually find out.

          • When we're not at your mom's, we're checking on you here.

            I'm sure that's the best you can do with your broken dick.

            We know that when you stop posting here, you must be playing outside, or napping.

            To you, napping is an insult? Fuck, I've got to do something to attract a higher class of troll, you guys are fucking tedious.

      • No, of course no one would do that. But if you look at how things are, you'll see that America is run in a way that allows the rich to enjoy socialism, while the poor deal with capitalism. There isn't anything written in black and white, yet there is very much a class system in America.

  • Article wants me to sign up to read it, so I DNRTFA.

    But are they including voluntary job switches with involuntary job switches?

    Someone who has bills coming in and lost their job may have lower standards for pay than someone who already has a job.

    If both groups are included together, that skews the numbers. It may be that for voluntary job switchers, do see a bigger boost in pay than staying.

    I'll also note that this is a business news publication, and businesses are trying to force RTO. So there

  • The conpany I work for had an approved merit increase of an average of 3.5% across ~1500 employees last year and 2.5% this year. Most people taking other jobs are looking at > 10% bumps. I recently interviewed for a job doing the same thing I do now but at a different company that is offering 30% more than I currently make. Know your worth people.
  • People don't quit or stay over a 0.2% pay difference.
    They quit because they hate their boss.

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