The job-hopping capitals of the U.S., UK, Australia and Canada

The Great Resignation pushed a new wave of workers to treat short stints as a strategy: leave after a year or less, stack roles, and move again. MakeResume set out to find where that pattern is most common — and where employees stay put — in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

When Joe Strummer sang, “Should I stay or should I go?” he answered with simple math: staying meant trouble; leaving meant double. For people with ordinary jobs, the odds are rarely that clean.

The job-for-life era is gone. Job-hopping as a mass habit is older than Gen Z: “churn flow” peaked in the 1990s after the mass layoffs of the 1980s. The gig economy has already lost its utopian sheen. With lockdown behind us and AI reshaping hiring, nobody is sure what tenure is supposed to look like next. A string of completed contracts can train you to adapt. It can also leave you without deep skill or relationships. “An employee moving jobs too often can mean they aren't in a position long enough to truly learn the role or gain new skills,” says Lauren Thomas, European economist at Glassdoor. “It can ultimately damage a person's career: it may be challenging to demonstrate to a new employer previous proficiency and achievements.” How long to stay should depend on the jobs you have already done, your mid-term aims, and — rarely — a raise chase alone. Industry and city matter too. So we measured where people hop most, and where they stay.

How did we identify the job-hopping capitals?

We analyzed LinkedIn data from the most populated cities in the U.S., UK, Australia, and Canada, then counted currently employed users with less than one year at their current company (“job-hoppers”) versus more than 10 years (“loyal”).

Those two filters are blunt by design. They do not capture people who left and returned, contractors, or workers who are not on LinkedIn. They do show where short tenure and long tenure cluster in the same snapshot. Data is correct as of June 2023.

Which cities job-hop the most — and which stay the longest?

Berkeley, California, leads U.S. hopping; Rochester, Minnesota, leads U.S. loyalty. Manchester and Preston bookend the UK. Brisbane and Newcastle, New South Wales, bookend Australia. Vancouver and Ottawa bookend Canada.

• Berkeley, California, is the job-hopping capital of the U.S., with 19.23% of the workforce switching jobs in the past year.
• Rochester, Minnesota, has the most loyal employees, with 33.33% having been at the same company for over 10 years.
• The UK's most fickle employees are in Manchester (20.87% under one year), and the most loyal are in Preston (23.21% over 10 years).
• Australia's job-hopping capital is Brisbane (18.61% under one year), and its job-for-life capital is Newcastle, New South Wales (20.51% over 10 years).
• Canada's most short-lived jobs are in Vancouver (20.50% under one year), and its lengthiest stays are in Ottawa (27.22% over 10 years).

Country	Highest share under 1 year	Highest share over 10 years
United States	Berkeley, CA — 19.23%	Rochester, MN — 33.33%
United Kingdom	Manchester — 20.87%	Preston — 23.21%
Australia	Brisbane — 18.61%	Newcastle, NSW — 20.51%
Canada	Vancouver — 20.50%	Ottawa — 27.22%

If you are comparing markets before a move, stack this tenure map against how competitive each city is for applicants and which industries are advertising the most openings.

Why does Berkeley lead U.S. job-hopper cities?

Proximity to Silicon Valley puts Berkeley at the front of a cluster of tech-hub cities with the highest employee turnover in the United States. Job-hopping has long been the cultural norm in IT.

At its best, that rotation of talent is thought to spread ideas and strengthen the strongest firms in a tight cluster of tech companies. One 2018 figure suggested millennials in Silicon Valley swap jobs at twice the average national rate.

The same churn can starve smaller start-ups and open pay gaps inside a single company. “To have one of your top engineers come back and re-trade two years in because they have a super competitive offer — it's really hard to manage, and I think we're seeing a decent amount of that because the market has changed so quickly,” says Katie Hughes, executive talent head of General Catalyst.

Where are the most loyal employees in America?

Southern and Midwest workforces show the longest tenures. Rochester, Minnesota, leads cities, and around one-third of workers in Iowa, Louisiana, Kansas, and Oklahoma have more than a decade with their current firm.

Employers often label someone a job-hopper if they keep leaving after a year or so — though “there's nothing magical about the one-year mark!” explains career advisor Alison Green. “If you leave four jobs in a row after 18 months each, you're going to look pretty job-hopper-ish.” A pattern like that is a weak pitch for investment — and how it reads still depends on the region.

California's tech and creative industries help drive the country's highest turnover. Job-hopping is sometimes described as a “California right,” with courts historically siding with movers and non-compete agreements treated as void in the state.

Some of these loyal regions are short of workers, which you might expect to encourage hopping in an employee's market. Many of the jobs, though, fit people who have not been to college — a group that tends to stay put in a job or at least in a town. Blue-collar technical workers can step into reasonably paid factory roles from high school, stay for years, train on the job or at night school, and accumulate healthcare and pension benefits that hopping would reset.

Which UK cities have the most job-hoppers?

Manchester has the highest share of workers under one year in role (20.87%). Bristol is second. About one-fifth of the workforce in those cities moves on each year. Preston has the most loyal UK workforce (23.21% over 10 years).

Job-hopping is more accepted in the U.S. and UK than in many other countries, according to Michael Butler, head of HR for Bristol-based consultancy Radius World Wide. “If you can get two years out of someone early on in their career, you are doing pretty well,” Butler told the BBC, adding that people in their thirties or beyond should not switch more than twice in a decade.

Several of the UK's largest cities sit among the hopping hotspots. Most loyalty capitals have populations around a quarter-million or less. Glasgow — population 635,000 — is the glaring exception, and it appears on both lists.

Preston has a population of around 95,000. It was recently announced that one of the city's biggest employers, the HMRC tax office, would remain open after years of uncertainty. HMRC employs 1,400 people in Preston. Civil-service turnover is relatively low in general, even after reaching 13.6% in 2021–22.

Why do Brisbane and Adelaide rank high for both hoppers and loyal staff?

Brisbane is Australia's hopping capital (18.61% under one year). Newcastle, New South Wales, leads loyalty (20.51% over 10 years). Brisbane and Adelaide also appear among the top three for both hoppers and long-stayers — a split explained in part by “boomerang” rehires.

Australians have historically held jobs for a long time, which may have held wages down. It has also been an employee's market, which frees people to shop for better conditions or jump. The hopper/loyalty split is muddied by the boomerang employee habit of rehiring former colleagues to cut recruitment and onboarding cost.

A boomerang hire can negotiate a role that lasts, because both sides already know the fit. “The great jobs boom is certainly happening,” says Elyssia Clark, head of customer insights and strategy at Seek. “Candidates are increasingly aware of it, and we are seeing more conversations around salary than in the past. Organizations are finding they need a really strong value proposition and must be able to clearly articulate why a candidate should join them.”

Which Canadian city job-hops the most?

Vancouver is Canada's hopping capital, with 20.50% of workers under one year in role. Ottawa has the longest stays, at 27.22% over ten years — and still posts a 17.22% annual turnover rate, just behind Vancouver and Montreal for hopping.

Vancouver and Montreal stand out as hopping capitals; neither appears among the top ten loyalty cities. The Great Resignation never really arrived in Canada: the number of job-leavers actually fell in 2020 and 2021 and remained lower in February 2022 than in the weeks before lockdown two years earlier. Vancouver's tech industry, though, is growing at about 6% year on year, stirring a pool of around 75,000 local tech workers to try new pastures.

More than a quarter of Ottawa employees have been in role for over a decade, which makes it Canada's loyalty capital even while its turnover sits close to the hopping leaders. Public-sector weight and a growing tech scene can coexist in the same city — which is why a single “hopping capital” label is a starting point, not a personality test for everyone who lives there.

Should you job-hop for a raise, or stay for benefits?

Treat hopping as a deliberate strategy or skip it. A quick earnings bump is real for many early-career movers, but longer-tenure workers often have higher absolute pay and better pensions — and a messy pattern can cost reputation.

Young professionals like hopping for skills breadth and for faster pay growth. Quitting for a new role is still a decision with a hangover. Full city-level figures sit in the interactive table below.

While job-hoppers enjoy faster earning growth — in part because hopping is common early in a career — longer-term employees often have higher earnings in absolute terms and may keep better benefits. When you think about leaving before two years are up, weigh more than the offer letter. If you stay, document impact so a raise conversation has evidence. If you move, keep the resume coherent so the next screen does not read as restlessness. For a company-level view of how hard U.S. applications pile up, see the most competitive American companies for job seekers.

How was this job-hopping study conducted?

To rank job-hopping and loyalty capitals in the UK, U.S., Australia, and Canada, we used LinkedIn data from the most populated cities in those countries.

We started with the total number of LinkedIn profiles by city and U.S. state that matched any “time in current company” filter. We defined a job-hopper as less than one year in the current company, and a loyal employee as more than 10 years in the current company.

We compared those counts with the total number of employed people on LinkedIn in each city, then repeated the process at U.S. state level. Cities were ranked within each country by the proportion of hoppers and of loyal workers.

Note: LinkedIn's search function rounds figures to the nearest thousand, so all figures above 1,000 have been rounded up. Figures above one million were obtained manually to keep accuracy, because those round to the nearest million instead.

The data of this analysis is correct as of June 2023.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as job-hopping?

In this study, a job-hopper is someone currently employed with less than one year at their company. Recruiters often react to a pattern of short stints — for example several roles of 12–18 months in a row — more than to a single short job.

Which U.S. city job-hops the most?

Berkeley, California, at 19.23% of the local LinkedIn workforce under one year in role as of June 2023. Tech-hub culture and California's approach to non-competes both sit behind that ranking.

Does job-hopping always raise your pay?

Movers often see faster percentage growth, especially early in a career. People who stay longer often have higher absolute pay and stronger benefits. Hopping only for a bump, without a skill or scope story, can backfire.

Is job-hopping worse in some cities than others?

Yes. Short tenure is easier to explain in high-churn tech markets than in regions where decade-long stays are the norm. Match your story to the market you are applying into.

Should I hide short jobs on my resume?

Do not invent tenure. You can group contract work, emphasize results, and explain a short stint in one honest line. A clear, tailored resume still has to survive a background check and a reference call.