It wasn’t very long ago when all we heard was doom and gloom about the economy.  People said they were happy just to have a job, ANY job.  It seemed everyone was worried.  But lately, things are changing in the workplace.  The phrase ”Your fired!” made famous by Donald Trump, is being replaced by “I quit!” more often these days.

Employers say there’s a slowly growing trend of people willing to leave jobs and either find something better, or start their own business; people like Andy Nathan, who left his job at a mortgage company and started his own social media consulting business, called “Smart at the Start”.  He helps small business owners get connected with social networking sites.  ” I had started using facebook and Twitter to build my mortgage business and I actually found that I was getting more interested in doing that.  I was having people ask me how to use it so I decided to switch over in that career and to be a social media consultant.” says Nathan.  Its something he says he never would’ve had the nerve to do a year or two ago.  ”In 2008 it kind of seemed like the sky was falling a little bit”.

People who had been clinging to positions they didn’t want, just to be working, are beginning to look for better options.  There are definite signs that the job freeze is starting to thaw.  In the first five months of this year, economists say, company payrolls grew by nearly half a million workers.  And with the economy slowly improving, so are people’s confidence levels, according John Challenger of Challenger, Gray and Christmas.  ”They stayed during the recession and kind of honkered down in their companies and now that its freeing up they are going out and finding better jobs”.

The department of labor says more people voluntarily quit their jobs than were laid off in recent months, and that’s good news for worker bees, because some bosses are now worried about losing their best people.   Raises are slowly creeping back onto the salary scene.  Some companies are adding back perks that had vanished during the lean years.  ”What companies are doing to hold on to people is they give them more benefits or maybe soft benefits like tuition reimbursement programs, more days off” Challenger says.  Paul Shanahan, a vice president at Adecco Employment Services, agrees ”We’re seeing more and more jobs opening up.  It really started more on the temporary side and now has moved into the temporary and permanent positions.  Since September of 2009, the temporary sector as a whole has added about 362 thousand positions. So that’s a good sign that the turnaround is beginning to take shape.  Now we’re seeing a transition more into permanent positions”.

Shanahan cautions that its not a completely rosy picture just yet.  The unemployment rate is still hovering around 10%, so there’s a long way to go for a full recovery.   Some people are still leery about making any changes, but Andy Nathan says he doesn’t regret starting his own business, not for a moment. “It’s the freedom, I love the freedom” he says.