Did you know that you can make more money just by switching jobs? Many thanks to Business Insider where I first saw this research. The conventional wisdom has always been that it’s a bad idea to move from one firm to another too often because it makes you look flaky. BUT a study showed that people who stay put for too long end up making less money than people who switch fairly frequently.
The researchers delved into the data and found that job switchers make about 1 percent more per year than those who stay the course. That does not sound like an impressive statistic, but picture it spread out over years and years. Thanks to higher re-set points every time you change employers, that 1% a year could add up to hundreds of thousands more by the end of your career. It’s particularly helpful to snag big salary hikes in your 20s and 30s because statistics show our incomes level off in our 40s, so you want that money to level off at a high level.
Bottom line: people who job hop a bit have more bargaining power when negotiating with a new employer than people asking for raises at their current job. Oh, and a positive trend the researchers noted: employees are going for it, quitting their jobs and taking new ones at pre-recession levels now. Woohoo! Sounds like freedom and flexibility to me!
Wage growth chart for job hopping: www.businessinsider.com/earn-more-money-switching-jobs-2017-7
