A job change pays off especially for skilled workers. On the other hand, those who have no special training for their job and look for a new job as a “helper” actually risk getting worse. Employees whose new job is in a closely related field of activity earn on average 3,500 euros more per year than before. That’s according to the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s study “Better prospects when changing jobs.” “Helpers, on the other hand, are at a disadvantage,” the study states. “They change jobs twice as often as skilled workers and particularly often start out in jobs that are foreign to them—mostly without opportunities for advancement or the prospect of better pay,” the authors write. According to the study, women are often worse off when changing jobs.
Male and female helpers who switch to jobs that are unfamiliar to them can thus hardly or not at all use their knowledge from the old job in the new one. This reduces their chances of advancement and they run the risk of ending up in ever worse jobs in the long term. “Helper do a lot of job-hopping,” the study says. They have to orient themselves on the labor market more according to demand than according to their competencies. This is particularly true for migrants: 52.7 percent of job changers among them subsequently work in a foreign field, compared to only 47.4 percent of people without a migration background.
“People without vocational qualifications are at risk of being relegated when they change jobs,” the study says. “Their risk of being relegated from a skilled occupation to a helper occupation when changing jobs is three times higher than for employed persons with vocational training,” the Bertesmann Foundation informs.
The situation is generally worse for women: 13 percent of women with training who change jobs experience a career decline, compared with only 9 percent of men. In general, the authors of the study recommend that everyone strive to obtain a vocational qualification. If that doesn’t succeed right away, partial qualifications are a good way to get opportunities for advancement, they say.
https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/de/themen/aktuelle-meldungen/2023/juni/aufstieg-und-mehr-geld-so-zahlt-sich-der-jobwechsel-aus-1
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Agentur für Arbeit in Tübingen. Foto: tünews INTERNATIONAL / Mostafa Elyasian.
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