It’s Not You, It’s the Market: When Satisfied Workers Contemplate Quitting

Conventional views of turnover intentions emphasize job dissatisfaction as a fundamental determinant. The authors investigate how generalized perceptions of most other workers’ quality of working life moderate the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Using two nationally representative surveys of American workers from November 2023 and June 2024 ( n = 7,500), the authors confirm a negative association between personal job satisfaction and turnover intentions. The authors then discover, however, that the generalized perceptions of the quality of working life attenuate that negative association. The likelihood that satisfied workers report turnover intentions increases when they perceive that most others have high job satisfaction, good management-employee relations, secure jobs, fair pay, and meaningful work. These patterns hold net of personal job qualities. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for turnover cognitions and action and interpret the patterns within the frame of social comparison processes and generalized perceptions of the labor market.