Amid reports of the Great Resignation of 2021 which has continued into 2022, the Pew Research Center conducted a study, “Majority of U.S. Workers Changing Jobs Are Seeing Real Wage Gains” to better understand the experiences of individual workers who switched employers in any given month from January 2019 to March 2022. The study found the majority of workers switching employers are seeing it pay off in higher earnings, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. government data. The report can be found here. Additionally, the study determined:
- Black and Hispanic workers, workers with no college education and younger workers are more likely to change jobs in any given month.
- Workers who changed jobs saw higher wage growth than other workers following the COVID-19 downturn. Workers often change industry or occupation as they move from one employer to another.
- Workers with at a least a high school diploma are less likely to exit the labor force and more likely to be with a new employer a month after leaving a job compared with their counterparts.
- Not surprisingly, a large share (77%) of workers ages 65 and older – the traditional retirement age bracket – exit the labor force monthly. About half of young adult workers (ages 16 to 24) and those nearing retirement (ages 55 to 64) also exit the labor force monthly upon separation from employment. Among adults in the prime of their working years (ages 25 to 54), 38% to 44% are reemployed within a month, about the same as the share that step away from the labor force.
