Characteristics of jobhoppers: An empirical study in Belgium

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the personal and company specific characteristics of job-hoppers. Due to a lack of previous studies using an appropriate measure of job-hopping, we introduce a new measure, namely the job-hop frequency. Based on the data collected from a survey, we empirically show that age is negatively related to the job-hop frequency. Gender moderates this relationship. Therefore, our analysis supports the view that young women tend to job-hop significantly more than young men, but as they age, women are significantly more likely than men to remain within the same company. When considering the reasons for job-hopping, significant gender differences are revealed. Women are significantly more likely than men to change jobs for family related reasons, whereas men are significantly more likely than women to change jobs for financial reasons. This research provides human resource managers more insight into the job-hop behavior of employees.