USA: 40% of those who changed jobs in recent months are looking for another job

Two out of five people who changed jobs over the past year in the United States are again looking for work, according to a new study published by consultancy Grant Thornton in which they interviewed 5,000 people from all over the country. And not necessarily because they are dissatisfied with the new job, or much less because they have been fired from that job.

The so-called Great Renunciation is a labor phenomenon that began during the pandemic and is still continuing at a steady pace. With the possibility of remote work, other working conditions, and the lower income of immigrants, many people in the United States decided to quit their jobs in search of better opportunities. In all industries, there is a shortage of workers, from people with high academic qualifications to people for jobs that do not require any kind of previous experience.

This has led many companies to start fighting over talent, offering better salaries and, above all, better working conditions that seem to be what employees need most (particularly the possibility of maintaining remote work, or at least having a hybrid system).

“The power now lies with the employees, they are the ones in the driver's seat in this market,” said Tim Glowa, one of the researchers in charge of the study conducted by Grant Thornton, part of the human capital services team.

The consultancy conducted its annual survey called The State of Labor in the United States, which indicates that 21 percent of Americans accepted a new job during the past 12 months. Of these, 40 percent are already actively looking for another job. The interesting thing is that among the total working population, only 29 per cent are proactively seeking employment. That is, a greater percentage of those who have already changed jobs want to change again compared to the total population.

Glowa indicated that although in some cases the search is due to the fact that expectations about new employment did not materialize in reality, in most of the cases analyzed for the study the motivation to look for a new job is more due to wanting to continue advancing careers, taking advantage of the intense activity of the labor market.

The logic would be that, perhaps, those who have already dared to change jobs are less afraid to try again if that means better working conditions.

“They made a recent change and realized it was easy to do so, so they're not afraid to try again,” Glowa explained.

In the so-called Great Renunciation, nearly 48 million people voluntarily left their jobs during 2021, a record number for the United States. The demand for employees to work is still much higher than the supply of employees in the market, to the point that the study found that more than 60 percent of people who changed jobs in the last 12 months had two or more job offers to choose from at the time of the change.

Among those who changed jobs last year, 40 percent received a salary increase that exceeds 10 percent.

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