[cperciva]

I can see the theoretical argument for universal healthcare making people more willing to leave their jobs in search of better opportunities, but I'm having trouble squaring the theory with the reality I see today: I can't think of any country where job-hopping is more commonplace or more accepted than the USA.

The only explanation I can think of right now is that people in the USA tend to be more self-centered and this is responsible for both the job-hopping and the lack of universal health care; but I'm not sure I'm convinced by it. Any ideas?

[rogerbinns]

I don't know what the job mobility statistics are, but remember that the US workforce is about one hundred and fifty million people and the European one is a similar order of magnitude. You need to scale comparisons accordingly (eg comparing the US to Canada where the latter has a workforce under 20 million).

Additionally it is far easier to move in the US. There are no immigration requirements, language barriers, major cultural differences, different education systems, certifications (sometimes states differ) or similar impediments. Many states are "at will" meaning that employment is not protected to the degree it is in many other countries. This means that mobility can happen from both employee and employer sides.

I don't think job hopping is due to being self centred (in the pejorative sense). The US tends to be very productive which means employment and employees are more able to move around to meet needs. That they do so is not a bad thing.

I've known couples where one works a big boring established company in order to bring in the healthcare while the other works at startups. They would both prefer to work at startups but by the time people approach 40 there is likely to be some health issues forecast if not already happening. (Even the fittest people wear out body parts!)

And if anything economic policies have been discouraging mobility. Higher house/ing prices makes people sticky and diverts income into unproductive use, but seems to be a goal. (We'd all be better off with a lot cheaper housing costs.) The lack of competition in communications (largely due to regulatory capture) means that remote participation is a lot less effective than it could be. And of course health care is dysfunctional and expensive, although the care received by some of the people some of the time is world leading.

[cperciva]

I don't think job hopping is due to being self centred (in the pejorative sense).

I didn't mean it in the pejorative sense -- just that in Canada I hear people say they're staying in jobs they don't like because they don't want to "let down" their friends who are working at the same company... and I don't think I've ever heard that from people working in the US (startup co-founders excepted).

[rogerbinns]

I worked for several years for a company just outside Silicon Valley where people said they stayed because they liked their colleagues so much, but otherwise would have left. Two anecdotes don't make data :-)

[Alex3917]

"Any ideas?"

Laws in the US are generally designed to make jobs temporary, as opposed to places like Japan and Germany where they're designed to keep you in one place for life.

- It's very easy to fire workers in most places.

- No compete clauses in employee contracts are invalid in many states.

- Most jobs don't have significant barriers to entry. Some do like medicine, law, teaching, etc., but plenty of others have none at all. (E.g. consulting.)

- It's very easy to create and dissolve companies, and companies themselves are designed to be temporary.

- Most industries are severely under regulated, it's easy for companies to switch between different industries and workforces.

Health care is the one big exception, but since every large employer needs to offer health care it's only a moderate barrier.

[saraid216]

> - It's very easy to create and dissolve companies, and companies themselves are designed to be temporary.

Would you mind elaborating on this? I feel that this should be true, but in practice there are so many heavily branded names that it's hard to actually believe it.

[wtracy]

I think he meant that, from the perspective of the law, corporations are meant to be temporary entities--not that they are generally run with the intent of being temporary.

[tomasien]

Can you substantiate your "I can't think of any country where job-hopping is more commonplace or more accepted than the USA" claim? I'm not sure you not being able to think of another country with a higher job churn rate is really worth addressing.

My claim is, by the way, that job churn would increase NOT that it isn't already high.