Young workers change jobs frequently, study shows

[alp227]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Young adults born in the early 1980s held an average of just over six jobs each from ages 18 through 26, a Labor Department survey showed Wednesday.

Since 1997, the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics has been keeping tabs on about 9,000 young men and women born in the early 1980s, surveying their educational and workplace progress. The latest survey is from interviews conducted in 2011-2012.

According to the survey, more than two-thirds of the jobs held by high-school dropouts lasted less than a year.

Women in the study group overall were more educated than the men. Thirty-two percent of the women earned a bachelor's degree, compared to 24 percent of the male participants. Overall, 70 percent of the women had either some college or received a bachelor's degree, compared to 61 percent of the men.

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/young-workers-change-jobs-frequently-study-shows

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I held a lot of jobs during that age bracket myself

back in 1964 to 1972 - six, to be precise. I think maybe it goes with the age. I also lived in more places than I can remember during that time period.

[closeupready]

2. This is a timeworn strategy of, after trading up a few times, actually getting paid

what you are really worth. Because once you land a job, you can be locked in to a certain salary, and HR will be averse to giving any one staffer a better raise than others, no matter how good you are, or how much value you contribute to the organization.

On the other hand, if you find another employer who is willing to offer you a job, it's fairly common to find that they are willing to give you a little extra something in your starting salary to compensate for making a change/switching employers, and all the stress this entails.

Not sure why this is 'news', as such, but whatever.

[neffernin]

4. +1

I remember my first real job in my career field of IT I was taught by the person above me and eventually took over their position when they quit. By the end of my 3 years at the position my pay had changed slightly upward but I was getting offers for a fair bit more salary and benefits at other places so I left.

A couple of years later I asked my old supervisor what he made it it was around double what I had made.

I imagine this is the story of nearly everyone who took on a professional career before the age of 25.

[RobinA]

9. Same In Retail

This was in the day, but in the '80's I worked in a department store and they were hiring department managers off the street starting at $18,000. That's with NO experience. I worked there as assistant manager for five years and knew my department like the back of my hand. They were going to put me in a management training program starting in an "easy" department, but my manager abruptly left leaving a large "difficult" department without a manager. Desperate due to the growing mess of the department, they were forced to make little old experienced me the manager. Offered me a big $12,500 (because $18,000 would have been too much of a jump in salary from what I was making, might give me a big head, I guess) to bail them out, and that's for someone who needed NO training and could simply take over. And do it well.

About a year later I announced that I was leaving and that one of the reasons was money. THEN they offered me more money. [Sound of barn door closing as hoof beats fade into the distance] I sat there looking at the store manager across the desk after this offer as I was struck by a bolt of lightning. They were paying me $12,500 because they thought they could get away with it. When they couldn't, they suddenly found $5,500 extra to pay me. That realization assured that I would not take the offer. I said to the manager, with whom I had a good relationship, that had they offered me that money a while ago I would probably have taken it, but since they didn't I had already made other plans that I would not change. This was my first real job out of college and a future union member was conceived.

[neffernin]

12. The parallels of my story are quite similar

but a good decade or two later. It is a shame that people out of school are forced to dance around in order to make their way up to good pay. My current boss had the same pay for nearly a decade before he took this position; and it was far below market.

[sofa king]

3. From the department of the obvious.

One excellent reason why I cycled through numerous jobs at that age was because many of those jobs totally sucked.

"Poop-picking" jobs, I called them. If I had to pick up someone else's poop, it was time to go.

But I naturally gravitate toward poop jobs, somehow.

I shovel compost into bags for my own amusement, now. Because after decades of personal experience I have concluded that it's all shoveling shit, some jobs are just more literal than others.

[VA_Jill]

5. Thank you, Captain Obvious

Isn't that when we're deciding what we want to be when we grow up?

[Skittles]

6. they saw what happened to their parents who had loyalty to their employers

[MosheFeingold]

11. True

But it is a two-way street.

I've had really five jobs in some 60ish years in the job force --- soldier, cop, lawyer for DNC, lawyer for big firm that worked for DNC, owner of small law firm that works for DNC (because I was tired of making the partners rich).

I'm in my eighties and now am an part-time employee of a firm I started decades ago.

I definitely remembered the people who stuck with us, and, when times were lean, made sure they kept their jobs.

I didn't have that kind of loyalty to laterals and ship-jumpers because they didn't have loyalty to me.

Now, my boss is a "kid" (he's 50 something) I hired a long time ago. I think they keep me around out of loyalty.

Anyway, long way of saying, pick your boss carefully, if you can.

Try not to work for giant companies because they are not loyal. People are loyal. And not all of them.

[DebJ]

7. That's not too far off from the averages for all workers.

The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current
employer was 4.6 in January 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
This measure, referred to as employee tenure, was higher than the median tenure
(4.4 years) in January 2010.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm

My youngest sister had 21 jobs in her first two years after high school.

[sendero]

8. Young workers..

... SHOULD change jobs frequently. IMHO and experience.

[freebrew]

10. +1000...

and take it from me, it's hard to change jobs after 45.

And you can't get a job after 55, unless you want minimum wage.