As I described in another post, there are interesting changes taking place in the Japanese work culture. One of them is the increase in job change activity. According to a local survey (Mynavi Survey 2024), between 2016 and 2023, there has been an increase in the turnover rate among full-time employees in Japan—from 3.7% to 7.5%.

Before answering the main question—what’s the acceptable pace of job changes in Japan—spare me a bit of beating around the bush this time. We’ll get there.

Why do people switch employers in the first place?
The most common reasons are career growth (usually through upskilling), better salary, improved work-life balance, or a search for more purposeful work.

Given that upskilling and salary growth are among the main reasons, is changing jobs truly the most important or only way to achieve those goals?
Apparently, yes BUT, on average, it depends on the type of job you have.

Let’s bring some research to the table.
In 2022, the consulting firm McKinsey published a study (Human Capital at Work: The Value of Experience) based on 4 million individuals across four countries (Germany, India, the UK, and the US—sadly, Japan was not included). The study examined how experience contributes to employee earnings. It also covered the role of job changes and its frequency.

Here are the key findings:

• On average, changing roles (80% of those changes involved chaning employers) is the most effective way to gain new skills and boost salary, especially for certain groups of workers. The less education or skills credentials someone has (at the start), the more they benefit from changing roles.
• The median “skills distance” per role change was 25% (that is a 25% gain in new skills).
• For bold moves, the average skills distance was 30–40% (noted in the US and India).
• Work experience contributes 40%–43% of lifetime earnings in the US, Germany, and the UK—but 58% in India.
• The higher the initial level of skills or credentials, the smaller the earnings boost from job changes (e.g., lawyers gained 35%, while title setters gained 75%).
• Each job move increased wages by 6–10% on average. However, this includes people who moved into lower-paying jobs—so the real increase for those whose pay rose may be higher.
• For bold career moves, the salary boost per change was 30–45%.
• In the US, people who moved into higher earning brackets averaged 4.6 job changes over the study period, while those whose earnings remained flat averaged 3.7 moves (over a ~10-year period).
• Among all the factors that influence how experience adds to earnings, the most important is time spent at a good organization early in one’s career (e.g. having a great mentor). This is followed by the boldness of career moves and the frequency of those moves.
• One of the limitations of that study, they acknowledged, is that it did not fully separate the experience effect among those who did not make much role moves (change in employers). In considering the average, they could not capture whether for the category who received unusually high salary raises, it was due to significant performance or due to the role’s change overtime (without changing employers). For instance, think in terms of a craftsman carpenter who polishes his craft over time, or a surgeon who becomes more proficient and expert after performing thousands of similar procedures — [I wonder how much do they benefit from changing jobs actually?].

In essence—and I emphasize the average—for certain types of workers, especially those who started their careers without high-level credentials, the only way to achieve significant salary growth over time is by making bold moves, relatively frequently.
If they’re lucky enough to start out at a great company that invests in them, that’s already a huge advantage—and this holds true even for highly skilled workers, including those in STEM.

Why did I bring up this study? Does it help answer what’s a reasonable pace of job changes in Japan?
Not directly. But I wanted to highlight that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to job change frequency. From the employee’s perspective, while frequent moves work well in some cases—and may even be recommended—in others, they don’t necessarely.

And how about from the employer’s perspective?
In many countries, frequent job changes are more culturally accepted, as long as people aren’t switching jobs every single year. In Japan, although work culture is evolving (as mentioned earlier), most employers still expect you to stay longer.

So, how long is “long enough”?
Let me combine insight from the same Japanese source mentioned earlier (this time, an interview with in-house recruiters) and my own experience:

• For someone in their 20s, more than 3 job changes is generally considered too much much [moves counted as the number of companies one worked for, within the considered time period, minus 1].
• For someone in their 30s, more than 5 job changes raises red flags.

Of course, the reasonableness of job change frequency can’t be viewed in isolation. Reasonable for whom? The employee, the employer—or both?

And since the country’s work culture matters, if you’re working in Japan and have been on the hopping path, it’s not game over, as long as you can tell a logical and coherent story about the moves.