The first two years in a role usually feel like clear progress. Nobody warns you what year five can start to feel like instead.
What the research shows
For most of the last several years, switching jobs paid noticeably more than staying put. ADP Research Institute's payroll data and Bank of America Institute's transaction data show the same pattern from two different angles, people who moved roles saw meaningfully larger pay increases than people who stayed. Bank of America's numbers put it at eight percent for switchers against five percent for stayers in early 2026.
That gap has been shrinking every quarter since 2022, and it has closed enough that switching is no longer the automatic better answer for everyone. The one group where the pattern has actually flipped is the top of the income ladder. People already earning near the top of their field now see bigger raises by staying than by leaving. Earlier in a career, or lower on the pay scale, moving still tends to pay more, just by a smaller margin than it used to.
This does not measure your specific role or your specific manager. It measures the market you are deciding inside of. What changed is the old default, leaving is nearly always the better financial move, stopped being reliably true somewhere in the last two years, and where you sit in your field now changes which answer actually applies to you.
Why the turning point is hard to feel from the inside
Nobody announces the moment a role crosses from still developing you to mostly just familiar. The work can stay completely full, even demanding, right through that transition, which is exactly why it is so easy to miss. Busy and still growing are not the same thing, and only one of them is what actually protects your market value over time.
Where to start
Once a year, honestly compare what you are learning now to what you were learning eighteen months ago. If the honest answer is not much, that is the signal worth taking seriously, not the tenure milestone itself and not how comfortable the role currently feels.
That does not mean leaving immediately. It means starting to look seriously, rather than waiting for the discomfort to force the decision for you, and checking that seriousness against where you actually sit in the market data above, not against a general feeling that moving always pays.
There is a specific way to have this conversation with your own manager, framed around growth rather than as a resignation threat, and it is worth thinking through before you need it.