How Long Should You Stay At Your Job?

95% of American workers said they planned to look for a new job in 2024. Money's a big part of this. 45% of American workers say they need a higher income.

Job switchers increase their salary more quickly, on average, than those who stay put. In February 2024, people who stayed at their job for more than three months increased their salary by 5. 1% year-over -year, whereas those who switched jobs increased by 5.

9%. I ended up almost doubling my salary after a year and a half, and then from there, each year, I probably increased my salary from anywhere to $15,000 to $35,000 or $40,000. But hiring professionals stress that it's important to be strategic about job moves.

You don't want to rise up the ranks too quickly and then be this expensive head that's sort of easy to chop in any kind of downturn. I think companies do expect an unrealistic level of loyalty, but unfortunately we're at their whim a lot of times, right? So we do have to play the game, and that game is making it seem like you're going to spend the rest of your life there.

They really do want to be lied to you. So how long is the optimal amount of time to stay at your job for your career advancement, salary, and your well-being? The survey data about why people leave their jobs is pretty consistent across the board.

Ranking at the top of the list are wanting a higher salary and not feeling like they have room for growth at their current job. The desire for higher salaries may lead people to job hop, which is when a worker jumps from job to job within a short period of time. Oftentimes, switching companies is the fastest way to get to that next level role in terms of seniority and in terms of your income level.

And the reality behind that is in your current company for you to get promoted, for you to get to the next level, that position needs to open up in a way that it's either someone leaves or they get promoted or the company is growing. Gen Z is 36% more likely than other generations to prioritize advancement opportunities. Even if there are opportunities for promotions within their current workplace, they may still find it easier to leave.

A lot of employers are reaching out to people and recruiting them. Workers have more negotiating power that way. You can also find out more easily what wages are available just by, you know, going on ZipRecruiter and looking at job postings, whereas perhaps finding out what the opportunities are within your company involves sort of an uncomfortable conversation with your manager.

Other common reasons for leaving are to get better benefits to escape a toxic work environment, and for better work life balance. The ancillary thing is, if I pay people more, would they be happier? If that were true, then investment banks and private equity firms law firms would be the happiest places in the world to work.

They notoriously aren't viewed that way because there's a certain way that you treat people, whether it's benefits or whether it's time off or compensation or, quite frankly, just how you treat people on a day in and day out basis with interpersonal skills. Those are the things that end up being more important. Workers also have career aspirations that may not be fulfilled in their current positions.

Early in my career, I always had the goal of eventually working for myself. So I told myself around the age of 30, try and get enough experience and exposure to the things that are required to have a consulting firm. So each job that I've worked, I've always left a company, if I felt like I had already obtained the skill that I needed to obtain.

And if I wasn't getting opportunities to obtain the skills that I needed, I went to the next place. As humans, we tend to change every 2 to 3 years in terms of our goals, our priorities, our stages of life. And now the younger generations ask themselves, well, how does my career serve me and not the other way around?

There's never a wrong reason to want to leave. If you want to leave, you can leave, right? But you have to be smart about leaving.

Americans consistently stay at their jobs for a median of 3 to 4 years. In 2022, the median tenure was 4. 1 years.

In 2002, it was 3. 7, and back in 1983 it was 3. 5 years.

But breaking those numbers down by age paints a clearer picture about how long Americans should stay at their jobs. Between 2002 and 2022, workers aged 20 to 24 typically stayed at their jobs for less than one and a half years. As you look at older workers, the median tenure increases with each age group.

I think a lot of people think of job hopping as being generational, but it's actually more driven by age than generation. So our parents generations at the same age as young people today, a lot of the data shows that they quit at very similar rates. A Bureau of Labor Statistics study found that American adults born between 1957 and 1964 held an average of 12.

7 jobs between the ages of 18 and 56, with nearly half of those jobs held before the age of 25. I think the idea that you have to stay at one company for an extended period of time comes most probably from our families and our parents, because their expectation and their version of success was to stay within one company, or at least within one career, their entire life. Our parents would get pensions, they would work for a company for a certain amount of time, retire and be paid for the rest of their lives.

So the incentives have shrunk and so the loyalty is just not there. Another thing to consider is a lot of benefits accrue over time. So if you switch companies too quickly, you could be leaving money on the table.

For example, some employers won't allow you to keep your 401(k) match until you've been there for a certain number of years. I see a huge wave of Gen Z and millennial professionals asking themselves: is this job, is this career right for me? And what do I want for my career to look like and to feel like and where do I find this career?

Versus feeling like I have to stay doing what I've been doing in my career. Recruiters say there's more leeway for job switching earlier in your career. Gen Z can do that right now because they're in their early 20s, but when they get to their late 20s or their early 30s.

They can't be moving like that. You're 22 years old. You're not making any career mistakes right now.

There are so many places that you could go, and none of them would be a mistake. Because you're so young and you have so many years to figure out what you want to do. When you're 35, not really right?

Ideally, you're in your career and you're making a good salary with great benefits. And once you have that, you need to be more strategic and intentional about those moves that you make, because now you can make a really bad career mistake. Instead of asking how long you should stay at your job, career experts suggest shifting your focus to how much you've accomplished.

I think the biggest risk with job hopping or leaving your job too early is you not understanding where you are in your development. And that's why I try to tell people remove your focus on money, especially if you're being compensated okay, and you're able to pay your bills and survive. Don't focus on just getting a huge pay bump before you are actually ready, before you have gained the right skills.

Don't focus on time. Don't focus on money. Focus on skills.

And if you are comfortable in the skills that you are acquiring, then you are ready to move on to the next level. Workers may also want to consider looking at their career as a whole, rather than honing in on only tenure or compensation. I took a $20,000 pay cut when I dropped hopped the first time, and I knew that was okay because it would come back tenfold based on the experience I was going to be getting at the new place of work.

So I don't focus on the money. And I know that's a privileged thing to say because my roles compensate me well. And at the time when I started in my career, I just really shrunk my cost of living.

I would say I lived in a house with seven other people and my rent was like $500. So after I took the $20,000 pay cut, I ended up almost doubling my salary after a year and a half. And then from there each year, I probably increased my salary from anywhere to $15,000 to $35,000 or $40,000.

And now that I'm an independent consultant, I mean, this is the most that I've earned ever. While it could deliver a quicker pay raise to switch jobs, often long term loyalty and tenure are rewarded in the end. And so if you look at the top five highest paid people within a company, they're often the veterans who were there from the start.

The company may only want people in senior leadership positions who have a demonstrated track record of reliability, of sustained performance, and of loyalty to the company. Companies don't do promotions that often. They might do them once a year, twice a year.

And so if you have only stuck around two cycles, but the company has a policy of promoting people about once every three years, you know, you may miss out on that big payday if. You are not a self-aware person and you don't do a lot of introspection for what you are and are not ready for, job hopping is not wise in my opinion. If you're not really able to assess your true skill set, it's going to be hard for you to get the opportunities that you want or reach your end goal.

Timing and the broader economy are important factors as well. How difficult would it be to find a new job. In January 2024, the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index fell to its lowest point since 2016.

You need to figure out like the strategy before you give that notice, because it is taking people 6 to 12 months to land a new position. A 2023 survey from Insight Global revealed that 55% of unemployed adults said they've been searching for a new job for so long that they are completely burnt out. This trend is hitting Gen Z the hardest, with two-thirds of them suffering from application burnout.

But 75% of Gen Z workers would quit their jobs without having a new one lined up. I personally would never leave a job if I don't have another opportunity already lined up. Another part of being strategic is thinking about how employers are viewing a candidate's work history.

For employers, turnover is challenging and very expensive because hiring realistically takes a lot of time and a lot of resources. 90% of organizations are concerned about employee retention. Helping employees upskill is a key component to retaining talent.

Companies with strong learning cultures see higher rates of retention, more internal mobility, and a healthier management pipeline compared to those with smaller levels of commitment. But there's also a goldilocks dynamic to this. Sometimes companies don't mind turnover.

People think that employers don't want any turnover. I disagree with that belief, and I think the companies that don't want turnover are actually creating more problems and mistakes, because that would imply that every person you hire was right. And I have never met anybody who's perfect at anything.

There are many industries that don't seem to mind high turnover very much. But some companies may be taking on a more forgiving attitude when viewing work history. I think employers are very, very suspicious of workers who switch jobs for a tiny incremental pay raise, but they understand if people are pursuing opportunities to learn more, to sort of advance their careers, to get broader experience with some career goal in mind.

I think the people who are in hiring positions now that are millennials and 15 years into their career have just a lot more empathy than older generations, and they don't expect the lifelong loyalty that older generations expected. Most people realistically have some sort of a gap on their resume, and the longer you are in the workplace, the higher the chance that you will have a gap, or you will have a short-term, three month experience on your resume because that didn't work out. Employers are human, and they know that.

They understand that. And the chance that the hiring manager that you're talking to has gone through that themselves is actually very high. You have to figure out what is the best decision for you.

And the only person who can do that is you. And people come to me all the time, like, just tell me what to do. And I tell them, I can't tell you what to do.

I can tell you like what I would do in this situation, but I can't tell you what to do because this is your career and it's going to affect you.