In a Tight Job Market, Job-Hugging is on the Rise
Episode 521 | Author: Emilie Aries
An unprecedented number of workers plan to stay put—but it’s not because they love their jobs.
Here’s a stat for you: most American workers say they plan to stay in their jobs for the next six months because they don’t have confidence in any better options becoming available
That’s a far cry from staying because you’ve found deep fulfillment in a career-defining role. This rising trend of “job hugging” came up in a recent Eagle Hill Retention Index report, which found that most respondents “perceive the job market as treacherous.” The perception of available opportunities is the lowest it’s been since the Index began in 2023.
Eagle Hill Consulting Employee Retention Index Signals Trend for Employees Staying In Their Jobs Will Continue Over Next Six Months
Late last year, Glassdoor also reported that 65% of employees feel stuck in their current positions. That’s not surprising given the slowing job growth rate. In July, only 73,000 new jobs were created, down significantly from the early 2025 monthly average of over 110,000.
Are you encountering job hugging, either as the one doing the hunkering down or as a manager seeing this attitude on your team? I have some thoughts on how to deal with both situations.
Love the one you’re with
If you’ve decided to sit tight at your current job even though you don’t love it because the prospect of job hunting right now is utterly unappealing, there’s no shame in that!
In episode 498, The Case for the “Good Enough” Job, Elizabeth Lotardo and I talk about doing what’s best for us. Sometimes that means staying at a job that isn’t maxing out your sense of purpose. But to prevent the doldrums from setting in, you do need to remain strategic about how you spend your time and energy. If it’s not the job hunt, maybe it’s diversifying your identity portfolio!
You put a lot of pressure on your job when you expect it to give you both a paycheck and a sense of purpose. But is that realistic? When it doesn’t meet that high bar, it’s up to you to find other aspects of life that add to your sense of purpose and meaning, whether that’s hobbies, or volunteering, or “leaning into family life,” as Neha Ruch discussed in a recent episode. We can learn to love the works-for-now job, even while expanding our identities beyond it.
Managers, job-hugging may not be a bad thing
If you’re leading a team that includes some suspected job huggers, take a breath before overreacting. If they aren’t leaving, that means a higher retention index, which can be good for business and productivity. As long as your team is still getting their work done, ask yourself if it really matters that they’re not as emotionally attached as they once were. What was dubbed quiet quitting a few years ago was quickly recognized, at least by savvy workers and leaders, as simply doing our jobs and not letting work overtake every moment of our lives.
You can’t demand continuous enthusiasm from your team, but you can respect and celebrate their whole person and double down on internal mobility and development efforts. How can you care for and challenge your highest performers to keep them intellectually engaged? How can you ensure your not-so-high performers have clear expectations for their outcomes and the support to achieve them? Make work a place for growth, celebrate their wins both inside and outside the office, and stop trying to control the rest.
Does this talk of job-hugging make you feel seen? If so, I want to hear how you’re dealing with this moment in your career, and in our broader economy. And if you’re a manager seeing this trend among team members, what’s your approach? What powerful ways are you finding to celebrate them for more than their job responsibilities alone? Catch us up on your thoughts over in the Courage Community on Facebook, or join us in our group on LinkedIn.
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
Glassdoor, Worklife Trends 2025
The Wall Street Journal, American Companies Had Lowest Job Growth in Eight Months
Episode 31, How to Give Effective Feedback
Episode 368, The Pros and Cons of Quiet Quitting and What it Means for Your Career
Episode 376 - How to Make Performance Reviews More Effective as a Manager
Episode 403 - How First-Time Managers Can Embrace Coaching
Episode 474, How to Cultivate a Culture of Growth Within Your Organization
Episode 498, The Case for the “Good Enough” Job
Episode 516, The Power Pause: Rebranding the Stay-at-Home Mom
HIRED: a job search accelerator video course
Ready to restart the job search?
Pick up some fresh tips for getting HIRED:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 521. I'm your host Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. Today I want to talk about a new trend in the job market known as job hugging.
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As of right now, most American workers say that they plan to stay in their jobs for the next six months, not necessarily because they're happy, but because they're not seeing better options. This pattern of hunkering down and holding on for dear life is shaping up to be a whole new workplace trend known as job hugging. So what is job hugging exactly?
According to new data out from the Eagle Hill Retention Index, most people right now perceive the job market as treacherous and report that they plan to stay put for the next six months. Their perception of opportunities available to them in the job market right now has plummeted to its lowest level since the Index began in 2023. Now, this is a really different scenario than the pandemic era great resignation, which saw 47 million people quit their jobs in 2021 and another 50 million people quit in 20. But as job openings and turnover returned to its pre-COVID levels in 2023, this mass exodus of workers transitioned into what economists called the great stay or the big stay. This idea that people are not moving around and not even seeing the idea of changing jobs as the financial boon and the economic opportunity that it used to be.
Just because people are staying put out of fear, however, does not mean they're happy about it. Back In November of 2024, Glassdoor reported that 65% of employees felt stuck in their current positions. And with fewer alternatives available, sitting tight at work has left so many people feeling a sense of cabin fever. And according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. job growth numbers are not that great, even if our president wished they were. We only added 73,000 jobs in the month of July. Down from the monthly average earlier this year of 111,000. So things are still growing to be clear, we're not losing massive amounts of jobs, but that job growth rate has slowed.
So I want to talk about this from two different angles today. How to deal with the trend of job hugging and hunkering down. If this sounds like you, and for my managers listening, how to deal with job huggers on your team. So if you find yourself staying where you're at out of fear of the job market, first I want to just say that there is no shame in that game. I sat down with author Elizabeth Lotardo earlier this year for episode 498, The Case For The Good Enough Job. And in that conversation, Elizabeth and I said, look, if you're doing what's best for your family right now, even if it's not maximizing your enjoyment and sense of purpose and fulfillment at work, that's fine. I deeply relate to that, as a matter of fact, right?. If you've got to protect yourself and you got to protect your livelihood and you got to provide for yourself and others, there is nothing to feel bad about. If you are strategically choosing to stay put.
Now, that's different than if you are just sort of passively and complacently staying put because you feel like an imposter and you feel like there's no opportunity out there for you. Like, there are still jobs out there, to be clear. But the job market is not what it used to be. So you gotta be strategic here about how you choose to spend your limited time, energy, and effort. And if it's not focused on the job market, or being continuously on the job hunt, or trying to maximize your sense of fulfillment and purpose at work, that's okay. There is a time and a place for the Good Enough Job. And you should check out my interview with Elizabeth to learn more about that concept.
My big take here is that we all need to diversify our identity. You can't put all your eggs in one basket if that one basket is your job, because expecting your job to give you a paycheck and a sense of purpose and fulfillment is a really high bar. So audit the rest of your life and think about how you can diversify your identity. Can you lean into family life, as Neha Ruch would call it? And as we talked about on our recent episode with her, she's writing all about ambitious women leaning into motherhood. Maybe parenting and your family is where you derive a sense of purpose and fulfillment right now, or at least some sense of purpose and fulfillment. If your day job kind of makes you feel dead inside, for lack of a better term, like, you still need to find a place and find a way to feel alive.
Maybe it's your hobbies, maybe it's the ways in which you give back, the service orientation, the volunteering you do, the sense of civic action and engagement you take part in in your community, or maybe it's a side project or a side hustle you start, whatever it is, you need to put your eggs in more than one basket. Diversify your portfolio of your personhood. Because if your day job leaves you feeling dead inside and the job market isn't giving you much to work with either. You have to find another way to feel alive.
Now for my managers and leaders listening if you suspect that you've got job huggers on your team, know that this is not necessarily a bad trend. A retention index being high can be good for hiring managers who are exhausted from their A players constantly leaving for greener pastures, right? So if you are sick of constant churn and turnover on your teams, this tightening of the economic market might be a good thing when it comes to continuity and retention on your team.
The key here is for savvy organizations to double down on internal mobility. That means you as a leader have to be invested in career development and in coaching your team members. This is your opportunity to build career pathways and grow capacity on your team. And building capacity on your team means investing in your highest performers to make sure they feel coached, and nurtured, and cared for, and developed, and that they're being given challenge assignments and opportunities for learning and upskilling.
But it also means tending to your lower performers for whom you need to get really clear about your expectations. What are the outcomes that you need to see from them, and by when and to what standard? We've got plenty of podcasts about leadership and management in terms of setting expectations through tasks and standards and making performance reviews count, how to practice and embrace coaching for development and how to create a culture of growth and learning on your team, right? We've got a lot of episodes on that I'll link to in today's show notes.
But then the rest we gotta let go of. Like yes, we want people to have a good attitude at work, but you can't demand emotional attachment from people. So if they're performing, right, as long as they're meeting expectations and then they're logging off and going home to not think about work, like, that is not a bad thing. That's not necessarily your problem. In fact, on the contrary, we should be respecting and recognizing the whole person of every employee, right? The identity that they bring to the table that goes beyond the hat that they wear at work. Let's find ways to celebrate what your team members are up to outside of work, and not just as it relates to their work wins and their progress in their careers.
I'd be curious to hear from you if you found powerful ways to commemorate, to celebrate, the whole person that we all bring with us to work and how we're blending work and life as individuals, but also as leaders and managers of teams who have a healthy approach to that work life, integration and that sort of identity diversification that I was speaking to earlier. So let's keep the conversation going as always, because I really want to know how this job hugging trend might be showing up for you and on your team.
So does that sound like you are you hunkered down and feeling a little bit of cabin fever? If so, how are you orienting yourself to this moment in your career and this moment in our economy? And if you're a team leader who's got job huggers at work, who you're managing, I'd be curious what your take and what your approach has been like. So, as always, let's keep the conversation going in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in the Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn.
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
And for a fully written out transcript and lots of show notes and links to all the data and other episodes that I mentioned, and for a shareable blog post summarizing today's episode, head to bossedup.org/episode521, that's bossedup.org/episode521. And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose, and together let's lift as we climb.
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