A few years ago, the buzzword was the Great Resignation — employees quitting in record numbers, chasing better pay, better titles, better everything. Now the pendulum has swung hard the other way.
Welcome to the “Great Stay”
Across the country, employees are staying put. Voluntary quit rates have fallen to roughly 2%, among the lowest levels in over a decade, and some companies are reporting voluntary turnover close to zero. The phenomenon even has a nickname: “job hugging” — employees holding onto the jobs they have, even when they’re not particularly happy, because the alternative feels too risky.
For a lot of employers, that might sound like good news. Less turnover, less recruiting, less onboarding. But the reality is more complicated and for companies that need to hire, the Great Stay is making things harder, not easier.
Why Everyone Is Staying Put
The shift isn’t really about loyalty or satisfaction. It’s about caution. After a wave of high-profile layoffs across major employers, even at companies posting strong earnings, workers have become risk-averse. Surveys show a majority of employees aren’t planning to look for a new job, citing concerns about inflation, cost of living, and the possibility of layoffs as their top worries.
Interestingly, this caution is showing up most at the management and executive level. Turnover among mid-to-senior leaders has dropped faster than at any other level.
The result is a labor market that looks calm on the surface but is actually quite tense underneath.
The Hidden Risk: Retention Isn’t the Same as Engagement
Here’s the trap a lot of companies fall into: low turnover gets mistaken for a healthy, happy workforce. It isn’t necessarily.
Job hugging often means employees are disengaged but staying anyway — not because they love where they are, but because they’re afraid of what’s out there. That combination of unhappy and immovable is a recipe for underperformance. Teams stop getting fresh perspectives. Skill gaps widen because new hires (and the new skills they bring) aren’t entering the organization at the rate they used to. In fact, a large share of HR leaders report wrestling with skills gaps right now, even as their teams stay fully staffed.
In other words: your retention numbers might look great in a board meeting, and your team might still be falling behind on the skills it needs for what’s next.
Why “Easy Hiring” Is a Myth Right Now
If you do need to hire — whether to backfill a role, add capacity, or bring in a skill set your current team doesn’t have — the Great Stay creates a counterintuitive problem: a smaller, more cautious market makes hiring harder, not easier.
When fewer people are actively job-hunting, the pool of candidates responding to job postings shrinks. The people who are the best fits for your open roles are often exactly the kind of people who are “hugging” their current jobs — competent, valued, and not about to take a risk on a lateral move just because a posting looks interesting.
To get someone like that to move, a slightly better salary usually isn’t enough anymore. Pay raises for job-switchers have shrunk considerably compared to a few years ago, which means compensation alone is a much weaker lever than it used to be. What moves people now is a combination of security, growth, and genuine confidence that the new opportunity is a step forward — not a gamble.
Where RHA Comes In
This is exactly the environment Russ Hadick & Associates was built for.
- We reach the people who aren’t looking. Our process has never relied on job boards or mass resume blasts. For over 40 years, we’ve built relationships with skilled professionals, many of whom weren’t actively job-hunting when we found them.
- We respect the candidate’s current position. We never send a resume to a client without the candidate’s knowledge and permission. In a market where people are cautious about even exploring a move, that discretion matters. It’s often the difference between a candidate engaging with us or not.
- We help you make the case for “yes.” Convincing a job hugger to make a move takes more than a job description. We help position your opportunity (culture, stability, growth path) in a way that resonates with candidates who have every reason to stay where they are.
If the Great Stay has your hiring stalled, it doesn’t mean great candidates aren’t out there — it means they’re harder to reach through traditional channels. Contact Russ Hadick & Associates to talk about how to build your team in a market where almost no one is raising their hand.
