Career changes can mean switching employers, occupations, industries, or leaving work temporarily. Recent U.S. and OECD research shows that these moves are common enough to measure, but their frequency and outcomes vary substantially by age, education, occupation, and tenure. The statistics below separate job changes from broader career changes and identify the measurement period and geography for each result.
Contents
- How often workers change jobs
- Industry and occupation changes
- Pay and employment outcomes after a move
- Age, career mobility, and working longer
- Who is considering a new job
- Tenure patterns relevant to changing careers
How often workers change jobs
Employer switching is one of the clearest measurable parts of a career change. In the United States, an average 2.5% of workers switched employers each month from January through March 2022. That represented about 4 million workers in an average month. For comparison, the average monthly employer-switching rate was 2.3% in 2021. These figures describe employer changes, not necessarily a new occupation or industry.
The same Pew Research Center analysis found that 34% of U.S. workers who left a job between 2019 and the first quarter of 2022 were with a new employer the following month. The result includes people who changed jobs as well as people whose next step was different or delayed. Source: Majority of U.S. Workers Changing Jobs Are Seeing Real Wage Gains.
The international picture also points to mobility. Across OECD countries, the job-to-job transition rate increased by 1.5% between 2012 and 2020. This is an OECD comparison over that period, not a current estimate for every member country. Source: Harnessing work potential at all ages: the role for career mobility.
| Measure | Result | Geography and period |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly employer-switching rate | 2.5% | U.S., January–March 2022 |
| Workers switching employers in an average month | About 4 million | U.S., January–March 2022 |
| Average monthly employer-switching rate | 2.3% | U.S., 2021 |
| Job-to-job transition rate | Increased 1.5% | OECD countries, 2012–2020 |
Employer tenure provides another way to view how long a change may be overdue or how early a move may occur. In January 2026, U.S. wage-and-salary workers age 16 and over had median tenure of 4.1 years with their current employer. For workers age 25 and over, the median was 4.9 years; for workers ages 20 to 24, it was 1.5 years. These are medians for current-employer tenure, not forecasts of when workers will change careers. Source: Employee Tenure in 2026.
Industry and occupation changes
Changing employers and changing careers overlap, but they are not identical. From 2019 to 2021, about 48% of U.S. workers who changed employers also entered a new industry in an average month. About 49.5% also changed occupations. At the same time, about 4% of workers who did not change employers changed occupations in an average month, and about 4% of all workers changed industries in an average month.
The occupation data show how much mobility can differ by field. In 2021, about 5% of U.S. workers switched occupations in a typical month. Monthly occupation-exit rates were about 3% in education, instruction and library occupations and in legal occupations. They were about 6% or higher in transportation and material moving, production, and farming, fishing and forestry occupations.
Industry-exit rates also varied. In 2021, the monthly rate ranged from 2.2% in educational services to 5.8% in social services. These rates describe exits from an industry during a typical month and should not be read as the share of workers making a permanent career change.
Tenure differs across occupation groups in the January 2026 U.S. data. Computer and mathematical workers had median current-employer tenure of 4.6 years. The median was 4.9 years for management, professional and related occupations, 2.9 years for service occupations, and 2.2 years for food preparation and serving related occupations. Source: Employee Tenure in 2026.
These differences matter when interpreting a career-change statistic. A worker can move to a new employer while remaining in the same occupation, change occupation without changing employers, or make both changes at once. The available measures capture each pattern separately rather than treating every job move as a complete career reinvention.
Pay and employment outcomes after a move
Pay outcomes after changing employers were favorable for many U.S. workers in the periods measured by Pew Research Center. Among job switchers, 51% saw an increase in real earnings from April 2020 to March 2021. Among workers who stayed with the same employer, 47% saw an increase in real earnings from April 2021 to March 2022. The periods are different, so the percentages should not be treated as a same-period experiment.
For January through December 2021, the median U.S. worker who changed employers had a 2.1% wage increase compared with 2020. The median worker who did not change employers had a 1.0% wage loss over the same comparison. In the later April 2021–March 2022 period, half of workers who changed employers had a real earnings increase of at least 9.7% versus a year earlier. The median worker who stayed in the same job had a real earnings loss of 1.7% over that period.
| Earnings measure | Employer changers | Workers who stayed |
|---|---|---|
| Real earnings increase, April 2020–March 2021 | 51% | — |
| Wage change, January–December 2021 versus 2020 | 2.1% increase | 1.0% loss |
| Real earnings change, April 2021–March 2022 versus a year earlier | At least 9.7% for half of workers | 1.7% loss for the median worker |
Changing employers is not automatically a financial improvement. Employment status after leaving also varied by education and age between 2019 and the first quarter of 2022. Among U.S. workers without a high school diploma who left employment, 60% had left the labor force by the next month and 21% were reemployed. Among workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher who left employment, 43% were reemployed the next month and 44% had left the labor force.
Among workers ages 25 to 54 who left employment, 38% to 44% were reemployed within a month. About 77% of workers age 65 and older who left employment exited the labor force the following month. These figures describe what happened in the month after leaving employment; they do not establish why a person left or whether the move was voluntary. Source: Majority of U.S. Workers Changing Jobs Are Seeing Real Wage Gains.
Age, career mobility, and working longer
Career mobility can be especially important when people expect to work for more years. Workers ages 45 to 64 made up 41% of the OECD workforce in 2022, up from 29% in 1990. In the OECD analysis, older workers were 14% more likely than younger workers to work in routine manual occupations and 6% less likely to work in age-friendly jobs. The share of OECD workers ages 55 to 64 in long-term unemployment was 12 percentage points higher than the share for workers ages 25 to 54. These comparisons use the periods and report estimates identified by the OECD; they are not a single current survey estimate.
The OECD analysis found a positive association between mid-career job switching and employment at age 60. In Europe, 61% of workers who changed jobs mid-career were employed at age 60, compared with 53% of those who did not switch jobs. In the United States, the corresponding figures were 72% and 68%.
For workers who switched jobs at ages 45 to 54, the predicted probability of employment at age 60 was 60.6% for European switchers versus 52.8% for non-switchers in the 2005–2020 analysis. In the United States, the predicted probabilities were 72.3% for switchers and 67.7% for non-switchers in 2015. Predicted probabilities are estimates from the analysis, not guarantees for an individual worker.
Other measures point in the same direction. In the OECD comparison, 30.7% of mid-career switchers had left the labor market by age 60, versus 39.8% of non-switchers. Across three European countries, workers who did not change jobs mid-career spent 15% more time in non-employment than mid-career switchers. Women who changed jobs mid-career were 3 percentage points less likely to be retired at age 60 than women who did not switch jobs. The OECD older-worker employment rate increased by 9.2% over approximately the past 60 years on average across OECD countries. Source: Harnessing work potential at all ages: the role for career mobility.
Who is considering a new job
Intentions are different from completed career changes, but they show how many workers may be open to a move. In a 2022 Pew survey, 22% of U.S. workers said they were very or somewhat likely to look for a new job within six months.
Employer tenure was strongly associated with that intention. The share saying they were likely to look was 32% among workers with less than one year at their employer, 23% among workers with one to 10 years, and 13% among workers with more than 10 years.
Age differences were also visible in the survey. Thirty percent of U.S. workers ages 18 to 29 said they were likely to look for a new job within six months, compared with 23% of workers ages 30 to 49 and 17% of workers ages 50 to 64. The shares were 28% among Black workers, 30% among Hispanic workers, and 19% among White workers. These are self-reported 2022 intentions, not measured job changes or forecasts. Source: Majority of U.S. Workers Changing Jobs Are Seeing Real Wage Gains.
Tenure patterns relevant to changing careers
January 2026 tenure data show why the same career decision can look different at different life stages. Among U.S. workers age 25 and over, 30.1% had at least 10 years with their current employer. The share was 2.4% among workers ages 25 to 29, 49.9% among workers ages 55 to 59, and 53.1% among workers age 65 and over.
Sector and industry also shaped tenure. Private-sector U.S. workers had median current-employer tenure of 3.9 years, compared with 5.6 years for public-sector workers. Accommodation workers had median tenure of 3.9 years, while food-services and drinking-places workers had median tenure of 2.2 years.
Taken together, the figures describe several different forms of career mobility: frequent employer changes, occupation and industry transitions, mid-career moves associated with later employment, and transitions following longer periods with one employer. They do not say that any single path is best. They show that a career change is measured differently depending on whether the question is about employer, occupation, industry, earnings, employment status, or tenure. Source: Employee Tenure in 2026.