Make the Leap Research
Career change statistics, from the inside
By Jon Miksis, founder of Make the Leap
Most career statistics come from surveys of what people say they might do. Ours come from what 15,903 working adults told a career assessment about their actual situation - their pains, their constraints, their money, and what they want next. Aggregated and anonymized, updated as the dataset grows.
Last computed 2026-07-08. Every number on this page links to itself - cite freely with attribution (how to cite).
The headline numbers
of working adults who take a career change assessment name burnout as a current pain - the single most common reason people consider a change (n=15,903). #
of career changers are 15 or more years into their careers. Career change is a mid-career phenomenon, not a young person's move. #
of working adults say AI threatens their current job - roughly 1 in 10, with sharp variation by profession (see the table below). #
people in our dataset earn $120,000 or more and still name meaning, culture, burnout, or unused strengths as a pain - the "golden handcuffs" cohort, 20% of everyone we measure. #
name feeling underpaid - and for administrative professionals it is the #1 pain, the only profession where money outranks burnout. #
assessment takers were between jobs or watching their job end - and 68% of them are 15+ years into their careers. #
AI job worry, by profession
Share of each profession's assessment takers who say AI threatens their current work. Computed from each profession's own respondents:
What career changers actually move toward
Themes of the personalized paths our assessment surfaces, across 15,894 people - counted once per person:
The through-line: independence. The most common direction is not a different employer - it is converting experience into consulting, fractional, or independent work. Even among the burned-out cohort (7,956 people), independent business is the leading theme at 35%.
Methodology
Statistics are computed from 15,903 completed Make the Leap career assessments through 2026-07-08. Respondents are working adults (primarily US) describing their own situation in a structured assessment; this is not a probability sample of the workforce, and percentages describe people actively considering change - arguably the more useful population. Percentages use the respondents who answered each question. Profession groups are keyword-mapped from self-described roles; path themes are grouped from personalized assessment paths and counted once per person. Aggregates only - no individual data is published.
Questions about the data, or want a cut we have not published? Email jon@maketheleap.co - we answer researcher and journalist requests personally.
How to cite this research
Cite freely with attribution and a link. Suggested format:
Go deeper
- Why People Stay Stuck: the narrative read of this data
- Career change by profession and situation - the full cluster
- Is my job safe from AI? The worry data, unpacked
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