Thinking of quitting your job? You might regret it by February

2 months ago 15

Opinion

January 8, 2026 — 10.19am

It’s time to get back to work. It might be this week, or next Monday, or even in a few weeks as the kids finally head back to school, but there comes a time when we all return to the workplace after the holiday period when you know more about the book you’re reading than what day of the week it is.

Every January there’s a familiar and predictable pattern that happens at the start of the year. Hordes of workers return to their jobs inspired by the perspective of holidays, walk into their boss’s office and resign.

The dread of returning to work after a holiday break can inspire some to quit. But hold your horses.

The opening of a new calendar is an obvious time to set goals and aspirations for the year ahead, and for many that includes resigning from their job and finding a better one.

There are about 200,000 new online job advertisements posted each month, according to data from the governments’ Jobs and Skills Australia, with December and January the quietest months of the year for new ads. About 40,000 fewer jobs are posted online over this period as businesses wind down for Christmas, then take a few weeks to fire back up.

The problem is that this coincides with many workers quitting their jobs in January after the Christmas holidays. Add to this all the new school and university leavers who also start looking at the same time, and you have a competitive job market with fewer vacancies available.

So if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to find a new job, my advice is to consider holding on just a little bit longer because the best month of the year to search for a job, statistically speaking, is actually in the middle.

Use the next few months to upskill in important areas, polish your resume and prepare yourself if you can.

August is the best month for jobseekers, with the highest number of new job listings and substantially fewer applications for each role relative to the number of openings. In other words, the odds will be better for you to land a role in a few months’ time than they are right now.

Now, of course, I don’t need to point out that the obvious flaw in this advice is that there’s no point staying in a role that you hate just because the maths might look better in a few months.

The costs of staying in a role you’re not engaged with can quickly add up mentally and physically, so consider this just one more additional data point to add to your decision-making this January.

There’s also an additional complication that I wrote about last year. “Job hugging” is the phenomenon where workers are increasingly choosing stability and security over switching roles as a response to the current economic environment.

For some it’s more attractive to stay in a role that you like, instead of leaving it to try to find one that you might love. Workers will continue to “hug” their jobs this year, which will likely muddy some of the future statistics in this area.

So, if you’re one of the people who had ear-marked January as the right time to ask your manager for a “quick chat” to deliver news of your resignation, hold your coffee for a moment and pause.

If you can, use the next few months to upskill in important areas, polish your resume and prepare yourself. That way, by the time the middle of the year rolls around, you’ll be in prime position to take advantage of the perfect moment to take the plunge.

Tim Duggan is author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com

Get workplace news, advice and perspectives to help make your job work for you. Sign up for our weekly Thank God it’s Monday newsletter.