Employers Beware: About 63% of U.S. Workers Are Open to Leaving

The ever-tightening job market holds a message for U.S. employers: work harder to hold on to employees, or they’ll be gone.

Almost two of every three workers at mid-sized employers are open to leaving for another job, according to a 2016 survey from the ADP Research Institute released Friday. While a 13 percent increase in pay would be a trigger to move, 46 percent of employees said they’d consider another job even at the current salary or less, provided other expectations such as a better career path were met.

Employers, already having a hard time finding new hires of the kind they want, also need to focus more on retention amid the lowest jobless rate since 2007. The theme was reinforced by three other reports this week: Subdued firings kept unemployment claims last week near a four-decade low; job openings reached an eight-month high in March; and in April, the proportion of small firms citing job openings as hard to fill was the highest since 2000.