The chances are you aren’t happy at work. That’s not a just lucky guess, according to a very large, long running employee survey by Gallup (25m employees surveyed in over 195 countries since the late 90’s) most people aren’t. The global average for enthusiastic, happy workers is only 13%. The global average for people who actively hate their jobs is 23%. Ouch. Behind the global averages there are some wide variations – 30% of US workers are happy (only 17% in the UK) – however, wherever you work, upwards of 60% of your co-workers you are just going through the motions and, the statistics suggest about half of them are looking for a new job.
There has been a fundamental change in the workplace since the 1980s. In most developed economies the number of lowest paid jobs (the bottom 10% of earners) and the number of highest paid jobs (the top 20% of earners), have grown every year over the last 30 years, but the number of middle ranking jobs (every decile in between) have declined. And this tells us two important things about the modern workplace:
What this means is the traditional notion of getting a job with prospects for promotion (the ‘career ladder’ as it was called) is slowly disappearing, and this is changing the way people relate to the workplace. There’s lots of stats that support that view. Freelancers (both high skilled and low paid ‘gig economy’ workers) are the fastest growing sector of the labour market in the US and EU. Graduates change jobs twice as often in their first 5 years now than 30 years ago. Around 50% of employees in the US are actively seeking new jobs. This trend is called ‘job hopping’ – moving companies to get a promotion – and it’s growing.
Also, according to Gallup, despite most companies offering flexible working arrangements (the happiest employees spend between 20-50% of their time working from home) most people report working when they are sick and working during weekends, evenings and holiday time. And the working week is still averaging between 41-46 hrs in the developed world, and hasn’t changed for decades.
What these numbers suggest is something most people accept (and most recruitment companies will tell you)… the best career move in the modern job market is quitting your current job and finding a better one. Which explains why most of us aren’t that engaged with our current workplace, doesn’t it?
At Renegade Inc. we’re all about giving people space to make up their own minds. If you want to explore this topic for yourself, here’s a bunch of interesting links we found when researching the topic. Stay curious…
Gallup’s employee engagement portal
http://www.gallup.com/topic/employee_engagement.aspx
Reports and summaries about productivity, economics and employment.
http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/165947/solving-productivity-problem.aspx
https://benrmatthews.com/freelance-statistics/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/wage-growth-productivity-van-reenen-pessoa/
Interesting reports, journalism and data about the changing shape of the workplace, automation & outsourcing
http://www.statisticbrain.com/outsourcing-statistics-by-country/
http://fortune.com/2016/08/28/amazon-tests-30-hour-work-week/
https://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/can-crowd-economy-solve-work-woes-millennials-and-over-65s
http://www.statisticbrain.com/job-seeking-hiring-statistics/
http://www.statisticbrain.com/resume-falsification-statistics/
http://www.statisticbrain.com/u-s-job-satisfaction-statistics/
http://www.statisticbrain.com/average-time-spent-tenure-at-a-job/
http://www.statisticbrain.com/fastest-growing-occupations-2014-2024/
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