Thinking of Quitting? Wait! Job-hopping no longer pays off as salary boost for changing jobs hits 10-year low, nearly matching job stayers

The latest federal data found that the pay gap between employees who remain in their positions and those who switch jobs has fallen to its lowest point in a decade, the Wall Street Journal reported.

During the first two months of 2025, workers who remained with their previous employers received a 4.6% bump in pay, while job switchers received about a 4.8% hike, as per the report. While the fall in hike started from 2025, yet the difference was slightly more, job switchers gained an average of 7.7% in salary compared to the job stayers' 5.5% bump, according to Wall Street Journal.

Is the Job Market Slowing Down?

Yongseok Shin, an economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, claimed that though the economy is not in recession, the job market is not as good as before, the Wall Street Journal reported. Shin said,«People are responding by staying put,” as quoted in the report.

Keith Sims, who runs a recruiting firm in Indianapolis, echoed these sentiments. His company specializes in placing teams for large tech firms like Panasonic, but he has noticed a troubling trend, salary offers are often coming in lower than expected, as per the Wall Street Journal report. Sims said, “We’re seeing wages be off from expectations most of the time,” as quoted in the report.

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In industries where salaries used to rise quickly, such as tech, this shift is becoming increasingly evident, according to the report.

Job Hoppers Get Pinched

Tech employees who previously hopped from firm to firm to get substantial pay increases are finding it increasingly difficult to do so. A lot of them negotiated better wages during the pandemic when the tech sector was flourishing, but today, those employees are not likely to get