Career Change Statistics

Changing Careers Often Is The New Norm

The average person will now change careers five to seven times during their working life according to career change statistics.

With an ever increasing number of career choices, 30% of the workforce will now change careers or jobs every 12 months.

By the age of 42 you may already have had about ten jobs. [D.O.L]

What Does This Mean for You?

• Employers expect, or at least accept, that workers will be changing jobs a lot more often these days – about every 3 years. Changing jobs often is not a bad thing any more
• If you are changing jobs less than every three years, you are in the minority.
  You may need to have an explanation when you front up to your next job interview about why you have changed jobs so infrequently!
• If you are going to change careers, you should plan for it; plan financially (you may take a pay hit or need to fund new qualifications): plan by setting up new connections and networks (that’s how most jobs are got); and learn how to market yourself well. Also allow time to potentially engage in some new career training.

What Causes Workers to Want to Change Careers More Frequently?

• Is three years about how long it takes for people to run into work culture problems, or personal conflicts in their working environment?
• Do we become more aware of our natural abilities as we get older and want to ensure we use these in our work life more?
• Do we simply get bored easier these days as a result of having many more career options?

What Are the Most Common Reasons For Career Change?

Career change statistics from the D.O.L don’t tell us much about why people change jobs. But here are some likely reasons based on other sources.

1. Frustration and disillusionment – not using my natural abilities in my current job.
2. Not happy with management.
3. Redundancy or business closure.
4. Working in a diminishing industry.
5. Realignment of personal or spiritual values (i.e.) a work and life re-evaluation.
6. Dislike of the organizational culture.
7. Want more money.

For more information on what motivates workers to leave a job, see career change reasons.

The Pros and Cons of Making a Career Switch

Career change statistics suggest we will change jobs more often, but is this a good thing?
Pros and cons:

• Less likely to get bored.
• You get to experience a greater variety of job types and organizational cultures.
• You will increase your collection of skills, thereby improving future job options
• You will meet more people (which is ideal for networking for your next job).

Some negative results of this could be:

• Having different career choices available means that you might be tempted to change careers too frequently.
• Prospective employers may think ‘hey this guy will be gone in 12 months’, thereby making them reluctant to employ you.
• You may also miss out on the opportunity to climb the ladder within an organization simply because you aren’t there long enough.
• Some people may also make some unreasonable judgments on your stability as an employee.

Are You Making a Career Change or a Job Change?

One of the problems when assessing career change statistics is to differentiate between making a job change and making a career change.

For example if a schoolteacher secures a new job as a corporate sales trainer, has she changed careers or just changed jobs?
You could argue that she has changed careers from education to sales.
Or you could argue that she has changed jobs from schoolteacher to adult teacher.

What about someone who transitions from a sales representative to a marketing manager.
You could argue that they have not changed careers because they are still in the sales field.

But marketing experts would say that sales and marketing are two completely different fields and that this transition does constitute a career change.

A Good Reason to Change Jobs

One of the most common reasons people leave a job is because they are dissatisfied and unfulfilled with their work.

Up to 80% of people are not happy in their current job according to research and the main reason for this is a mismatch between what they are good at and what they are currently doing.

So we should always be trying to move closer to a job that uses our natural gifts and abilities. This is the only way we can experience fulfillment in a career.

Find out what you are good at in life

The link to the assessment above considers your past life to discover what you are naturally good at (everyone’s good at something). It does involve a bit of work completing it, but it is time well spent. It will also become valuable long term as you can revisit the results over again as you make future career decisions. You can also use it when applying for jobs to provide evidence to an employer of what you are good at.

As a professional with over 15 years experience as a career consultant, I believe this assessment is probably the best career assessment instrument available.