Employees That Quit for More Money Quit Again

• Workers who joined the Great Resignation this year aren’t all better off.
• Data compiled by LinkedIn and reported by Bloomberg showed a higher-than-usual rate of job-hopping.
• Millennials and Gen Zers value their time and a sense of purpose at work in addition to money.

The Great Resignation hasn’t been so great for everyone.

Even though a record-high 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in March, fewer appear to be choosing to remain in their new positions, according to a LinkedIn study of 500,000 job changes in 2021.

LinkedIn found that among workers who started new jobs last year, the number who had been in their previous position for less than a year rose by 6.5% compared with the year before. That’s the highest percentage of job migration the platform has recorded since it started tracking data in 2016.

The data doesn’t distinguish between people who quit and ones who were fired, Guy Berger, a principal economist at LinkedIn, told Bloomberg. But because businesses are still looking to fill open jobs at record-high rates, there’s good reason to believe that people are leaving of their own accord.

“It stands to reason that it’s much more likely that people are faced by better opportunities,” Berger said. “There aren’t that many layoffs out there. It’s a really hot labor market.”

LinkedIn’s study backs up data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicating that a growing number of people who left their jobs to pursue better pay and opportunities are continuing to leave. Even among those who stay put in their new role, one in five polled in a March Harris Poll survey by USA Today said they regretted quitting in the first place.

Though the US economy has recovered about 93% of all the jobs it lost during the coronavirus pandemic, those employed workers are moving around a lot. March was the 10th consecutive month in which more than 4 million Americans resigned. A desire for higher pay, more benefits, and remote flexibility are among the reasons people have been quitting, especially Gen Zers and millennials. But if the LinkedIn study is any indicator, those perks don’t necessarily mean they will love their new workplace.

“At the end of the day, you spend most of your life working,” Laurel Camirand, who quit her job for a better one only to leave the new position, told Bloomberg. “It sucks to be miserable.”

All the job-hopping is making some workers ‘miserable’ and putting the pressure on companies

As the number of job openings ticks upward and people move from workplace to workplace, companies continue to raise wages to try to entice new hires. This has created a wage disparity between workers who have stayed put and new hires.

But FlexJobs’ Work Insight 2022 survey suggests rising wages have helped workers overall, with nearly half of 1,248 employed workers who negotiated over salary last year saying they were successful. Those numbers are encouraging workers to take the leap, especially during a time when inflation is taking a bite out of Americans’ wallets.

In fact, Matthew Mish, the head of credit strategy at UBS, told Insider that workers’ bargaining power amid the worker shortage was one reason that working- and middle-class Americans stood a good chance of withstanding inflation over the coming months.

“There is continued strength in basic negotiations,” he said, singling out the hospitality and retail industries. “Economists don’t see a lot of signs of weakness there,” he added.

But the data from LinkedIn and USA Today indicates that employers may have to do more than reaching deeper into their pockets to keep new hires happy: Workers are looking for more-fulfilling opportunities and a healthy workplace culture.

Lesley Labarba, a 28-year-old human-resources manager who switched jobs twice in the past year and saw a 39% increase in pay, told Insider she thought young people rising in the workplace valued their time more than generations past.

“As all these boomers exit the market and it’s filled with Gen Z people, you begin to see time as a commodity,” she said.