“I quit” said three million of your fellow citizens in the month of May.
“I quit” said three million of your fellow citizens in the month of May.
And that’s a good thing.
The job market is the strongest we have seen in a decade. Businesses are very confident and are hiring. Which makes employees, professionals, and wage earners very confident that it’s OK to say “I quit” because there’s another job out there for them.
The last time the number of people quitting in one month was over 3 million was May 2007, and the current level is the highest since April 2001.
Hires, too, are the best they’ve been, with over 5 mm new hires per month for the past three years straight. That’s also the highest level we’ve seen since 2007.
So there’s no doubt we are in the best employment market in a long, long time.
And what that means for you is that it is time to make your own good luck.
Time to leave? If you’ve been putting up with more at work than you’ve wanted to; if you’ve taken the advice to ‘grin and bear it’ until you no longer can; if the compromises and sacrifices you’ve made no longer seem like a good trade-off to you, it is time to move along.
Time to upgrade? Perhaps everything is fine at work, and has been fine for a while… years even. And while nothing is wrong, perhaps it is not right enough, either. Given the market and the opportunity, perhaps this year is the right time for you to explore possibilities and see if there’s a chance for you to get something much better — more interesting work, a higher-paying job, more responsibility in a role — than what your employer is offering.
Time to change? Or perhaps you’ve just gotten complacent and haven’t thought about changing in a long while. After the recession you were thankful for having a steady job and that thankfulness has just slowly morphed into a passivity and inertness that has caused you to not pay attention: you’ve let recruiter calls go answered, you’ve not shown a lot of curiosity about other firms in your industry, and you’ve let your attendance at trade shows and networking events lapse a bit. If any of these themes resonate with you, now is your time to move. With the US employment market looking and feeling its best in a decade, your active investment in your future will be well rewarded.