Freedom of Movement: How Can We Make Changing Jobs as Easy as Changing Phone Companies?

It wasn’t very long ago that when you moved to a new address, you got a new phone number. And this holdover from the landline era continued as cell phones started becoming popular, especially if you were switching carriers. This kept you loyal: if you didn’t want to deal with the inconvenience of telling all your friends your number changed, then you would stay with Company A, even if its rates were higher and the coverage was spottier than Company B. That was good for the phone companies but bad for their customers.

But in the early 2010s something changes: smartphones are widespread, and there are plenty of phone customers to go around. Increased competition between the phone carriers means they want customers to switch, because Company X thinks it can compete on price and quality compared to Company Y, and besides, cell phones aren’t tied to a fixed region in the same way landlines were. So “porting” becomes common practice, and now, it’s very easy to move across the country or switch carriers and still keep your same phone number. 

That’s good news for consumers, because it allows us to freely choose the carrier that best suits our needs, based on coverage or price or any other factor. It’s also good news for providers, because they can freely attract all the customers they can, without worrying about obstacles blocking a prospective buyer’s path.

Let’s apply that same logic to changing jobs.

The Jobs of Tomorrow

A job change offers the opportunity for a worker to make more money, apply new skills, and benefit from joining a growing industry—all at once. And the reverse is also true: a job change allows a worker to get out of a situation where their salary is low or they aren’t set up well for long-term career success. 

At the peak of The Great Resignation, in the spring of 2022, job-changers in the US saw real annual wage gains above 15%, while job-stayers saw less than an 8% difference. That gap has narrowed as the labor market has tightened, but changers still average higher real gains than stayers. 

At a time when scarcity and disruption are rocking the global labor market, when demographic shifts and the emergence of AI are challenging our traditional ideas of how work gets done, the job market is changing fast. And when conditions change, we need to move with them—which means it’s increasingly important that workers can move from one job to another. 

Research from the World Economic Forum estimates that nearly a quarter of the world’s jobs will change from 2023 through 2027, as new ones are created and old ones disappear. To use our phone company analogy, imagine something was forcing AT&T out of existence as we knew it. If their customers weren’t confident in their ability to find a new carrier, they might be forced to go down with the ship. 

If workers can’t easily move from a disappearing job to a stable one, or from an existing job to a new, high-growth one, then they’re missing out on the benefits, and so is the entire global economy. Employers also stand to gain from an efficient, free-moving talent marketplace, because a future-ready workforce depends on a reliable supply of workers and skills.

That’s why the World Economic Forum and Lightcast have collaborated to study what job transitions actually look like, and how to make them even smoother. “Unlocking Opportunity: A Global Framework for Enabling transitions to the Jobs of Tomorrow” provides real-world examples of successful career changes that workers have made across each of the world’s major regions: East Asia and the Pacific; Europe; Latin America and the Caribbean; Middle East and North Africa; North America; South Asia; and Sub-Saharan Africa.

One trap that economic analysis can fall into is being too academic and removed from real-world outcomes. But worker actually needing a new job doesn’t want ivory-tower theory, they want practical solutions. So in constructing this analysis, Lightcast and the WEF started by studying real transitions that real workers have made all over the world. All the job changes highlighted met three criteria: they were viable (sufficiently similar in skills), came with a salary increase, and provided long-term stability. These transitions included Nurse Managers becoming Physicians in the United Arab Emirates, Law Clerks becoming Sales Representatives in Brazil, and UI/UX Designers becoming Software Developers in Turkey.

So What Can We Do?

The report also lays out four potential solutions to make job transitions easier across the labor market. Two applications are focused on legislative and structural changes—and they might offer inspiration to everyone in the US elected last week: one is increasing worker safety nets, ensuring that people in transition have support as they pursue new roles or training. The other is to increase collaboration between stakeholders, particularly among government, educational institutions, and employers, in order to better prepare the workforce of tomorrow for the roles where they’ll be needed. 

But the other two applications are more applicable to businesses and HR departments. The first is reskilling and upskilling for emerging opportunities. By identifying the skills that will be critical in the future, employers can create training programs and invest in internal mobility that establishes employees on career pathways within the company. 

Improving employee-employer matching is another potential solution, and it relies primarily on the employers. Offering increased flexible and remote work options can expand opportunities for workers, and work-training programs also give potential employees the chance to assess whether a role is the right fit before fully committing. 

Creating a system where phone numbers could transfer between carriers took work. It required phone companies to invest in a way of doing business that was different than what they’d done in the past. But ultimately, it worked, and businesses and individuals are both better off for it. 

The same is true of job changes. Collectively, these solutions—and examples—offer a proactive approach to navigating the labor market’s evolving demands, which can ensure that both workers and employers have the resilience needed to thrive in an era of constant change. Learn more about “Unlocking Opportunity,”  the WEF and Lightcast report, right here.

Thanks for reading On The Job, a regular roundup of ideas, trends, and research from Lightcast that shape how we see the world of work. Be sure to catch up on our past issues (including “Skipping School: Why Are Teachers Leaving The Classroom?” and “Why Do Older and Younger Generations Look at Work Differently?", and you can also subscribe here. We’ll see you next time.