Job attribute dissatisfaction and turnover: New job or no job?

We show that dissatisfaction with different job attributes predicts workers’ job mobility, using ten waves of the Dutch Working Conditions Survey (2014–2023) linked to administrative records covering over 360.000 workers. We find that dissatisfaction with non-wage attributes, such as interesting work, leadership and job security, is a strong and robust predictor of turnover across subsamples, related to a 30% higher probability of job separation. Overall, they explain 33% of the total explained variation. Different types of dissatisfaction are associated with different exit destinations: monetary and contractual dissatisfaction is primarily associated with job-to-job mobility (new job), while dissatisfaction with non-wage attributes, in particular intangibles, is more strongly linked to exits into non-employment (no job): unemployment, self-employment, and education. Our results are partly cyclical: the relationship between intangible dissatisfaction and turnover is stronger in tighter labour markets. Taken together we show that the type of job attributes a worker is dissatisfied with predicts both the likelihood of leaving and the kind of labour market transition that follows.