Job hopping generation: Why Gen Z and millennials are changing jobs at record rates

By Jenesy Gabrielle Burkett Fox

Job hopping has a bit of a bad reputation. Job hopping is a term used to describe people who “hop” jobs after being in a position between zero and two years. More specifically, if your resume lists more than five jobs from more than two companies over a seven-year period. In theory, this tells employers that applicants are either fired a lot or aren’t loyal to their employers and positions making them flighty. Employers use job hopping to infer the reliability of a prospective employee.

In practice, this seems to be an outdated measurement in a system that isn’t operating as it once did. In previous generations, less than half of people were willing to switch careers or job hop. Meanwhile, 75% of Gen Zers are willing to switch careers.

Job hopping as a measurement of employee loyalty assumes a few things. First, it assumes that the job you’re in pays you a livable wage. Second, it assumes that the positions applicants have held are equivalent to their educational and/or skill level.

A livable wage is a wage that provides adequate income for necessities with no more than 30% of one’s income being allocated toward housing. As of 2022, ZipRecruiter reports the national average entry-level salary in the US as $33,186. This is compared to the lowest livable wage of Kentucky at $43,000 and the highest livable wage of Hawaii at $61,000.

With many entry level jobs asking for a minimum of one to three years experience, employers are setting themselves and employees up for failure. The majority of college graduates are ineligible for entry-level positions because they don’t have one to three years full-time experience. This forces many new graduates into under-employment and necessitates going into positions you are overqualified for in order to work “up” to a position or company that meets your educational and/or skill level.

Which is the fatal flaw with employers using job hopping to judge the loyalty of prospective employees: In order to assume that length of position equals commitment to a position, it assumes that the employer is committed to the employee.

In 2022, we are seeing 92% of organizations giving pay raises. However, this is after 33% of organizations cut or froze pay in 2020 without making up for that reduced pay since. Of the companies planning to give raises this year, 44% are planning to give raises of more than 3% to compete with the 9.1% increase in inflation between June 2021 and June 2022.

In addition to inconsistencies in raise amounts, raise frequency varies wildly based on the organization and sector you work in. Some organizations will give merit-based raises whereas others give raises based on seniority. With the unpredictability of when and by how much people can expect to receive raises and/or move up in organizational hierarchy, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to employers why job hopping is beneficial to employees.