By Ray A. Smith

More Americans are looking to switch jobs than at any point in the past decade. In a cooling job market, that's a lot easier said than done.

White-collar hiring continues to slow, but workers' restlessness to find new work is intensifying, new Gallup data show. More than half of 20,000 U.S. workers surveyed in November said they were watching for or actively seeking a new job. That's the largest share since 2015, eclipsing the so-called Great Resignation of 2021 and 2022, when millions of people quit jobs for better ones.

The result? Job satisfaction has fallen to its lowest level in recent years as employees feel more stuck -- and frustrated -- where they are, according to Gallup, whose quarterly surveys are widely viewed as a bellwether of workplace sentiment. Smaller raises and fewer promotions are spurring some of the discontent, workers say. So are cost-cutting moves and stepped-up requirements to be working in offices more often.

Not too long ago, those employees could act on their dissatisfaction by finding a new job with relative ease -- and better pay. Now, "we currently sit in a holding pattern," says Gallup workplace research director Ben Wigert. Just 18% of workers surveyed by the polling firm said they were extremely satisfied with their current job, down from 20% a year ago and a third less than a decade ago.

Though he made good money, Pancho Gomez says he felt trapped in his job as a senior manager of customer experience at a retail-tech company. He craved more communication and says being asked to do more with less left him feeling disempowered. Yet his search for other opportunities turned up few.

He was laid off in June, and says he felt relief instead of disappointment. "The handcuffs were removed without me having any say in it," says Gomez, who lives in Reno, Nev. Inspired by his own work with a career coach while feeling stuck, he started his own coaching business this fall.

About three million people quit their jobs in September, about 500,000 fewer than a year earlier, according to Labor Department data. Workers' staying put means employers can worry less about turnover, Gallup's Wigert says. The risk is that employee burnout rises and productivity suffers if workers feel stuck.

"All of these factors are essentially leading us to the state of overwork and employees feeling like they lack purpose and meaning," says Jennifer Moss, a workplace consultant and author of a new book on work culture. The growing amount of time workers spend in meetings and messaging co-workers as workloads increase has contributed to the malaise, she adds.

Some companies, such as consulting giant McKinsey and credit-card issuer Synchrony Financial, are trying to help staffers feel less stuck by creating more opportunities to take on new projects or temporary assignments with other teams.

Workers' satisfaction with their pay may stall, too, as raises are projected to shrink further. Among 1,900 U.S. companies polled earlier this year, nearly half said they downsized their budgets for salary increases in 2024, to a median 4.1% from 4.5% in 2023. Next year, they project median raises of 3.9%, according to employer-advisory firm WTW, which conducted the survey.

Employees say they also are feeling the effects of their companies' focus on efficiency. Nearly three-quarters of workers said their employers had gone through some sort of disruptive change in the past year, according to the Gallup survey.

Among managers who were polled, half said their teams had been restructured in the past 12 months, and nearly the same share said they were working with reduced budgets. As a result, most managers said employees had been given additional job responsibilities.

Write to Ray A. Smith at Ray.Smith@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 03, 2024 11:26 ET (16:26 GMT)

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