Once upon a time (a few years ago), if you wanted to rapidly increase your salary, the best way to do it was by “job hopping”: bouncing up the career ladder to leverage better pay and benefits. This is a particularly effective tactic when the labor market is tight, such as during the COVID pandemic, because employers are willing to stretch themselves for the talent they need.
In 2026 that’s no longer the case. Economists have been poring over the low-hire, low-fire jobs market for the best part of a year, and it appears that the job-hopping hack is unwinding.
ADP’s latest data suggests that there are now only a couple of industries where competition between employers results in better pay: industries where demand for skilled labor outweighs supply. A pay trends report shared with Fortune yesterday from the private payroll company showed that in January, year-over-year pay growth for job hoppers slowed to 6.4%, down from 6.6% in December.
For job stayers, their pay growth held steady at 4.5%, where it has sat for the better part of the past year.
The gap between job stayers and job hoppers (analyzed by tracking high-frequency payroll reporting for the same cohort of workers over 12-month intervals to compute each individual’s year-over-year change in gross pay, including base salary, bonuses, and tips) has been shrinking, particularly since this summer, and hasn’t been so close since November 2020. As of January, the difference in pay growth between switchers and stayers is just 1.9%.
