If you stayed in your first job for years and worked your way up, the Gen Z habit of leaving every twelve to eighteen months probably looks quite entitled to you. For the longest time, staying put with a company and working your way up was exactly how careers were made. 

With some exceptions, those days are gone, times are much tougher, and getting on the job ladder with a reasonable salary is harder. After adjusting for inflation, entry-level pay in the private sector has fallen over the past 25 years, down 10% for degree holders and 28% for master’s degree holders, according to a PNB Research Institute report published last month.

Job Hopping Isn’t New

Switching employers once a year is not a Gen Z invention. Millennials were the most frequent job changers of the previous decade, PNBRI’s research shows that jumping for a new role slows down naturally as people get older. 

Gen Z entered the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, when hiring freezes were widespread and competition for entry-level roles was intense. Finding a first job that matched their qualifications was harder and slower than it was for previous generations.

The PNBRI report makes it very clear that not all job hopping is the same, drawing a clear distinction between two kinds.

Type of Change	Reason for Changing	What it Means
Exploring	Switching jobs to find a better fit, build skills, or move up	Normal early-career behaviour
Escaping	Leaving because pay is low, the role does not match qualifications, or there is no clear path forward	A sign the job market is not working well

PNBRI states that most job changes among young workers today fall into the second category.

The Pay Has Not Kept Up With Prices

For many young workers, moving jobs is less about ambition than trying to find a salary that keeps up with everyday living expenses. The minimum needed for a single person to live decently in Kuala Lumpur is estimated at around RM2,400 a month, while government-linked investment companies have set a living wage of RM3,100 for their own permanent staff. Yet 66.3% of degree holders and 93.1% of diploma holders are still earning below RM3,000.

When pay struggles to cover basic living costs, staying in the same job is not always realistic. Can we blame employees if they look for better opportunities?

Qualified For More Than They Are Hired To Do

Skill-related underemployment, where workers end up in roles that do not match their qualifications, affects 35.5% of the overall workforce. Among workers aged 15 to 24, which is how DOSM categorises the youngest working age group, and includes those who entered the workforce straight after secondary school, that figure jumps to 74.3%.

Not all young workers end up in roles below their qualifications. But when they do, it is harder to stay in a job that does not use what they trained for.

An Unstable Start Can Impact Your Career For Decades

Research from the United States found that workers who began in unstable employment earned about 13% less in their first year compared to peers who started in stable roles. By age 40, a gap of around 5% remained. Australian data showed a similar pattern, with workers cycling through short-term contracts or underemployment earning about 85 cents for every dollar their peers made. The gap narrowed over time, but never fully disappeared.

For a 23-year-old taking a job below their qualifications because nothing better is available, the impact is not only short-term. It can affect earnings years down the line.

The Problem Is The Job Market, Not The Worker

The PNBRI report argues that the goal is not to stop young workers from changing jobs, but to fix the conditions that are driving them to do so.

Wages need to keep pace with living costs. The Progressive Wage Policy introduced in 2025 is part of that effort, linking pay increases to skills and productivity. By the end of 2025, more than 51,000 workers had already seen structured wage increases under the programme.

Many graduates struggle to find roles that match what they studied, which turns early job switching into a necessity rather than a choice. Even after landing a first job, opportunities to learn new skills or move into better roles are not always available. For workers at smaller firms, training and upskilling opportunities are often limited, even though that is where most of the workforce is employed.

Labour demand hit 9.23 million jobs in Q1 2026 and workers are becoming more productive. More jobs and higher output will only go so far if pay, job quality, and training do not keep up.

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