Job hugging overtakes job hopping

The headline is not just a vibe shift, it is a system change. The U.S. quits rate sat at 2.0 percent in July 2025, the same level that has persisted for months. That is the lowest sustained range since early 2016 if you exclude the pandemic shock. The job switching flywheel that once boosted wages through outside offers is not turning with the same force. The numbers confirm it.

Korn Ferry named the behavior. They call it job hugging, and they are right about the mood. After the hop-heavy period of 2021 and 2022, more employees are clinging to current roles, including many top performers who would normally be first out the door. This is not a story about loyalty, it is about risk tolerance, slower pipelines, and managers who prefer to hold their headcount steady rather than gamble on replacements.

Worker confidence mirrors the trend. Surveys show falling belief that a better job is easy to find. The New York Fed’s most recent reading on the probability of finding work after a layoff hit a series low in early September, while broader labor indicators point to caution. When confidence fades, optionality collapses, and people default to the job they know.

Hiring supply is thinner on the platform side as well. LinkedIn’s Economic Graph shows U.S. hiring down on a year-over-year basis and still well below pre-pandemic cadence, even with modest month-to-month bumps. If the marketplace has fewer live transactions, every hop looks harder, and staying put starts to feel rational. That is what founder types would call a liquidity problem in the jobs marketplace.

Media shorthand frames this as a U.S. narrative, yet the UK is flashing similar signals. Research there shows under-35s prioritizing security, with employers cutting openings and reinforcing performance pressure. Different tax and macro backdrops, same behavioral output. When economic fog thickens, mobility slows, and the career funnel narrows from both sides.

If you build or run platforms, think of the last five years as two opposite epochs. First, a high-churn cycle where outside offers were the default raise engine. Then, a low-churn cycle where internal mobility and retention programs carry more load. The product logic shifts with it. In a hop cycle, the marketplace rewards aggressive applicant volume, quick matching, and comp bands that flex. In a hug cycle, value moves to career lattices, reskilling inventory, and manager tooling that increases internal transfer velocity.

The data supports that posture. JOLTS shows quits flat at 2.0 percent while layoffs hold near 1.1 percent. That is the low-hire, low-fire equilibrium. It is not a recession spiral, it is a risk ceiling that operators and employees are both respecting. Indeed’s Hiring Lab reads the same tape, pointing to limited churn and subdued wage momentum.

Here is the tension founders and HR leaders need to decode. The hop era rewarded external bidding wars. The hug era punishes lazy internal labor markets. If your internal marketplace is a dead end, your best people will park for a while, then bolt at the first credible macro thaw. If your marketplace is alive, you can convert the hug into stickier tenure, higher skill density, and better unit economics per seat, since you will trade some external recruiting spend for internal redeployment.

You can also feel the platform incentives changing. Third-party job boards and sourcing tools thrived on volume during the hop era. Lower application liquidity forces them to pivot toward quality signals, assessment layers, and warmer introductions. Think fewer blast applications, more structured pipelines, richer skill taxonomies, and closer integration with learning platforms. The winners will look less like classifieds and more like mobility infrastructure that spans internal and external markets.

Compensation dynamics are adapting too. During the hop cycle, external offers set the pace, which lifted median pay quickly but also drove compression headaches. During the hug cycle, managers regain some price discovery power, yet they assume a new obligation. If you keep people without growth in scope, you will pay an engagement tax later. Smart operators are already shifting dollars toward role redesign, not just across-the-board bumps, and they are tying raises to mobility paths that the org can actually deliver.

The East versus West comparison matters for builders with cross-regional footprint. In the U.S. and UK, hiring deceleration and low quits show up in public data and platform dashboards. In parts of ASEAN and China, the cultural and regulatory context has always made mobility less fluid, yet the platform behavior rhymes. When macro uncertainty rises and corporate planning cycles lengthen, internal transfer pathways gain relative value. Copying a U.S. style hop-driven talent brand into a low-liquidity market will not convert. Instrument the internal market first, then add selective external reach.

Do not misread the headlines about wage growth stabilizing for stayers as proof that hugging is a free lunch. Business Insider’s synthesis called out a risk that is already visible inside teams. If advancement stalls, the pent-up attrition will come back with interest when the next hiring cycle opens. That is not a threat, it is a forecast of behavior. You mitigate it by making the waiting period productive. Real projects, real skills, and visible moves, not just patience theater.

If you run a platform, product math changes in a hug cycle. Reduce friction in internal mobility flows, build skill graphs that HR and line managers actually use, and tune matching toward adjacent roles that preserve domain context. If you run a company, operating math changes as well. Source fewer net-new heads, convert more through reskilling and role redesign, and publish clear banded paths that show pay progression without requiring a resignation letter.

The narrative shift has already filtered into mainstream business pages. The Week framed it as a low-hire, low-fire market, which is not quite stagnation, rather a pause while both sides wait for clearer signals. That framing is closer to how operators feel it on the ground. Pipelines are not empty, they are slower, and every decision has higher scrutiny. That is exactly when system upgrades beat splashy hiring campaigns.

Miles’s take, plain and simple. Job Hugging Is Replacing Job Hopping because liquidity is lower, risk tolerance is tighter, and the marketplace is repricing speed. Treat it like a product constraint, not a cultural failing. If you build the internal market now, you will harvest outsized retention and capability when the next hop cycle resumes. If you wait, the first sunny day will drain your bench.