About 58% of workers say that staying at a job too long is one of their biggest career regrets, according to Resume Now’s 2024 survey of 1,000 workers across four countries. By contrast, among those who changed career fields, roughly 30% regret the change — meaning more than two-thirds do not. The gap is roughly 2:1, making career inertia one of the more lopsided regret asymmetries in the survey literature.
The finding aligns cleanly with Gilovich and Medvec’s temporal model: inaction regrets dominate over time. A bad career move generates sharp short-term regret (the “what have I done” phase), but this fades as people adapt to new roles. Staying too long, by contrast, compounds — each passing year adds another counterfactual (“I could have left three years ago”). The Resume Now data confirms this age gradient: mid-career workers report the highest regret rates (70% of millennials, 69% of Gen X), while baby boomers — who have had decades to either act or rationalize — report 52%.
The caveat that matters is self-selection. People who change careers are not a random draw from the working population. They tend to be more risk-tolerant, more dissatisfied with the status quo, and more likely to have a concrete alternative in mind. The ~30% regret rate among changers reflects this filtered population, not what would happen if a random office worker were reassigned to a new field. The 58% staying-too-long figure is also broader than it appears: it includes people who eventually did leave but wish they had done so sooner, not just lifelong stayers.