Is Job Hugging Replacing Job Hopping?

During the 2008 financial crisis, many Americans felt the economy was going to collapse, and job uncertainty was widespread. In two Gallup polls from early 2009, only around 10% said it was a good time to find a quality job. The lyrics to a popular country music song from the 1970s, “take this job and shove it,” were repurposed and became “take this job and love it,” as those with jobs were deeply concerned about keeping them.

In a mid-August University of Michigan reading from their Surveys of Consumer Sentiment, the share of consumers expecting unemployment to get worse in the year ahead was about 60%, a reading last seen during the financial crisis. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that the unemployment rate has moved in a narrow 4.0% to 4.2% range for more than a year, Americans aren’t convinced. In the mid-August Economist/YouGov survey, 32% said the unemployment rate was increasing while 22% decreasing. Americans are growing more concerned about a possible recession with a third in the latest Economist/YouGov poll saying we are already in one. Still, the pollsters say the belief that unemployment is a very or somewhat serious problem has changed little in the past year.

There are several reasons for the stability of the response on the seriousness of unemployment. First, Americans see inflation as a far more serious threat than unemployment, and they are worried that President Trump’s tariffs will make things worse. In the University of Michigan’s data, spontaneous references to plans to buy major items in advance to lessen the impact of tariffs rose in 2016 when Trump first trumpeted tariffs, and then they rose again after tariffs were implemented on specific items like washing machines in 2018. But the mentions climbed even more sharply after Trump’s 2024 election.

Another reason that views on the seriousness of unemployment haven’t changed much in the past year is because most Americans feel confident about their own job security even as they worry about other workers. In Gallup’s latest, 5% of employed adults said it was very likely and 10% somewhat likely they could lose a job or be laid off in the next year. Fifty percent said this was not at all likely and another 34% not too likely. For those with jobs, concern is low.

Gallup has been asking a different question about satisfaction with job security yearly since 2001 and occasionally prior to that. In the 2024 responses, 57% of adults employed full or part time said they were completely satisfied with their job security, 26% somewhat satisfied, 8% somewhat dissatisfied, and 5% completely dissatisfied. The “completely satisfied” response dropped slightly from the low sixties in the past few years, but it was still robust. In Pew’s December 2024 reading, 33% said they had a great deal of job security, 36% a fair amount, and 17% some. Just 8% said they had a little and 5% none at all. These responses were little changed from 2023.

An interesting aside: at the time of Pew’s late 2024 survey before Donald Trump’s federal workforce cuts started, government workers were much more likely than other groups to say they had a great deal of job security. Forty-seven percent of them, compared to 29% of private sector workers, gave this response.

Americans’ general pessimism about the economy as a whole right now and concern about the prospects for their fellow workers are causing most workers to stay put their current jobs. In Pew’s survey, only 11% said it was very likely they would look for a job in the next 12 months, while 14% said it was somewhat likely. Sixty-three percent in Pew’s survey said it was very or somewhat unlikely they would. In Gallup’s more recent data, 18% said they were watching for or actively seeking a new job. More than a quarter gave that response in questions asked between 2014 and 2021 before COVID intervened and made the prospect of changing jobs remote. For some, “job hugging” has replaced “job hopping”.

The data gives us a split attitudinal screen. Americans are concerned about the plight of people without jobs. At the same time, as we approach Labor Day, most employed people are reasonably confident about their own job situation. Both things are true. Tomorrow’s column will look at what people say about different features of their jobs.