For young Canadians, it has become the norm to change careers, a new survey shows.
About a third of Generation Z and Millennial workers have already switched careers several times, according to a poll of 500 Canadian workers. The survey was conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Express Employment Professionals, an international staffing agency with offices in Canada.
“Younger people right now, when they enter the job market, they enter into a very different job market than our parents did,” said Valentina Castillo Cifuentes, associate director of the Youth & Innovation Project at the University of Waterloo. The project researches how young people engage in society and the economy.
“It’s way more unstable than it was before. It’s more precarious than it was before,” said Castillo Cifuentes.
While younger generations have spent less time in the workforce than older generations, many have switched careers as many times as far more senior workers.
According to the poll, 57 per cent of Gen Z respondents and 54 per cent of Millennial respondents had switched careers at least once in their lives. In comparison, 55 per cent of Generation X and 66 per cent of Boomer respondents had done the same.
The Millennial and Generation Z demographics cover individuals born between 1981 and 2012. Generation X and Baby Boomers are born between 1946 and 1980.
‘Cog in the wheel’
About half of survey respondents cited lack of fulfillment and advancement as reasons to change careers.
These reasons do not surprise Meghan Reid, a managing director at Canada Career Counselling who counsels Canadians of all ages on their career decisions.
Reid, who is also a psychologist, says many young Canadians want to feel a sense of purpose in their work. They can be quick to change jobs if they feel like a “cog in the wheel,” she said.
“[W]ith an entry level job, where you don’t have any sense of the bigger picture of the company or the work that’s being done, sometimes you just feel disconnected and like it’s not really meaningful for other people,” said Reid.
“If they don’t feel connected to the bigger purpose of why they’re doing what they’re doing, oftentimes they want to make a move.”
Reid says she does not see older generations, such as Boomers, expressing as strong a need to feel a sense of purpose in their work.
Young Canadians expect more out of their jobs, says Miriam Groom, CEO at Mindful Career, a career counselling service provider. In her experience, many expect to be promoted or receive a raise sooner than previous generations.
In the survey, about a third of respondents cited inadequate compensation as their reason for switching careers or wanting to do so.
“Staying in one role and in one organization might limit that opportunity of a wage increase, basically,” said Castillo Cifuentes.
Workplace flexbility
Workplace flexibility is another factor motivating young workers’ career moves.
The survey showed 55 per cent of young workers have a strong desire for more workplace flexibility, such as the ability to work from home.
Social media is partly behind this trend, says Castillo Cifuentes. About three-quarters of the survey’s respondents said that seeing others work from home has influenced their desire to pursue similar opportunities.
In practice, though, only a minority of Canadians work from home. About 20 per cent of Canadians worked mostly from home in November 2023, down from 40 per cent in April 2020, according to Statistics Canada.
But the pandemic shifted many people’s perspective of what work could be, says Reid.
“Prior to the pandemic, it’s like life was the way it was: We all get up and mostly go to our jobs physically every day, and that’s just the reality,” said Reid. “Once the pandemic ended, people didn’t want to necessarily shift back to the way we were working before.”
Starting over again
The vast majority of all survey respondents — 84 per cent — said they would change careers if they had the resources to do so. Many respondents cited “having to start over” or going back to school as reasons for not doing so.
Many hesitate because they are unsure of whether they have transferable skills, says Groom.
For those who do decide to change, many will pursue further education to set them apart from their competition, says Castillo Cifuentes.
But the race to become better educated has led to “degree inflation,” Reid says. “Now everybody has a degree, and it doesn’t set you apart the way that it used to,” she said.
Reid says companies are responding by increasingly hiring candidates based on their skills, rather than their formal credentials.
“What we’ve been talking with clients about for probably the past five years is a shift to [creating] a more skills-based resume,” she said.
Reid has noticed that some parents encourage their children to forgo working while in school, so they can focus on excelling academically. But she encourages parents to do the opposite.
“To me, that … cripples kids in certain ways,” she said. It is the children who are “getting real-life work experience, volunteer experience, [or] putting themselves out there in different ways” that are developing the skills that will help them find employment, she said.
Reid encourages people to try something new if they are feeling unfulfilled in a job.
“I see this with youth. I see this with older employees too, where they just are worried, [and think to themselves], ‘Well, what will somebody think if I ask that question, or if I just go talk to them, or I reach out and ask for help?’ If you talk through [these worries] … oftentimes the worst case is rejection or the person doesn’t respond,” said Reid.
“But if you actually put yourself out there, a lot of the time, it gets you a step forward — so it’s sometimes just [about] pushing through.”
