The Great Stay: Why Switching Jobs No Longer Pays Off in 2025
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Switching jobs is no longer the moneymaking career move it once was.
In February, annual wage growth for people who switched jobs actually fell behind those who stayed in their current roles, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s wage growth tracker. Job switchers saw their wages go up by 4.2%, while wages for so-called job stayers jumped 4.4%.
“This advantage has vanished,” Sofia Baig, an economist at Morning Consult, says in an email.
The trend marks the first time job stayers beat job switchers in terms of wage growth since 2018. And it’s a stark reversal from the tight labor market workers experienced during the pandemic.
Amid the labor shortage in 2022, for instance, job openings were plentiful and employers were paying a premium. Wages spiked 8.5% that July — the highest reading since the Atlanta Fed began tracking wage data in 1997. Job stayers saw a handsome earnings bump too that month, with wage growth clocking in at an abnormally high 5.9%.
The picture is much different today. Workers now have “fewer opportunities to switch jobs and to realize wage gains,” Bill Congdon, labor economist and senior fellow at the Urban Institute, says in an email.
With interest rates being held high to keep a lid on inflation, the labor market has notably cooled. Baig notes that hiring activity is down to levels we haven’t seen in over a decade — but layoffs, at least, are not widespread.
Now staying put has become the more lucrative choice for workers — a predicament some are beginning to call “the great stay.”
However, with inflation remaining stubbornly high, hanging on to one current job is simply not enough for many Americans to make ends meet.
Are job hoppers becoming job hoarders?
As switching jobs becomes less lucrative, we’re beginning to see a surge in Americans who are taking on multiple jobs.
In February, the Labor Department reported that more than 9 million people held at least two jobs, the largest number of multiple jobholders on record and a 7.4% increase from the year prior. Women and workers aged 20 to 24 are more likely to hold multiple jobs than other groups.
Congdon notes that while the sheer number is increasing, the share of workers with multiple jobs has previously registered higher than it did in February.
Still, the overemployment trend is having a moment. For some workers, it's a necessity. For others, it's an opportunity to cash in. In the subreddit r/overemployed, members often document how they juggle multiple (mostly remote) jobs at the same time. The online forum was created in 2021 and has already garnered more than 400,000 members. Similarly, on both LinkedIn and TikTok, influencers and career coaches alike are openly sharing advice on working multiple remote jobs at once and not getting caught.
According to a recent report from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, overemployment is becoming increasingly popular among college-educated workers in particular. The analysis found that people with multiple jobs do tend to make more money but just barely — out-earning single job workers by only $900 a year.
“This behavior might be attributed to a desire to keep pace with recent inflation,” the researchers wrote.
For Baig, with Morning Consult, all of this points to a slowing labor market. She says that people with multiple jobs probably couldn’t get the hours or wage they wanted with the first one.
“So they are working multiple jobs in order to make an acceptable wage,” she says. “I’m sure they would rather be working one job that paid what they wanted.”
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