During the pandemic hiring boom known as the “Great Resignation,” switching jobs often meant a sizable pay raise.
These days, there’s less financial upside to making the move, and more workers are choosing to stay put — a trend economists call the “Great Stay.”
Workers who switched jobs in January saw median pay increases of about 4%, according to recent Bank of America Institute analysis of payroll deposit data. That’s less than a third of the roughly 14% raises seen at the peak of the pandemic hiring boom in 2022 and less than half of what workers typically gained from switching jobs in 2019. The measure reflects the change in pay in the three months after a job move compared with the same three months a year earlier.
“There was a huge hiring boom in 2021 to 2022 during our pandemic recovery which pushed salaries up quite a bit, even for lateral moves, as employers competed aggressively for talent,” says Bonnie Dilber, a recruiting leader at software company Zapier.
“Now, there’s a huge candidate pool and companies have less reason to compete aggressively on salary,” she says.
