Job hugging: When staying put becomes a retention liability

What job hugging looks like

Job hugging is concentrated in hospitality, healthcare, education, and retail. There are industries where external mobility is limited and economic uncertainty hits hardest. More than half of job huggers admit they're staying due to economic fears, not company loyalty.

"The risk today is assuming that retention equals commitment," says Brooke Page-Thompson, president of Velocity Advisory Group. "When people stay out of fear, it masks disengagement." The pattern shows up in subtle ways. Employees stop putting in discretionary effort and set rigid boundaries around job descriptions. Career conversations become transactional. Engagement survey averages may look stable, but trend lines reveal specific groups—often early-career workers and high performers—quietly disengaging.

In one client engagement, Page-Thompson worked with a company that had two CEOs within 24 months and significant senior leadership turnover. Employees consistently shared feedback through surveys and town halls about manager engagement and breakdowns in collaboration, but leadership lacked the capacity to address the concerns.

When leadership finally assessed where breakdowns were occurring, many employees had reached a point of indifference. Because the industry offered limited mobility between companies, instead of leaving, employees stopped collaborating. Communication broke down across the organization.

Page-Thompson says engaged employees are "moving toward something, while job huggers are simply staying put." The cost is significant. Gallup estimates that disengaged employees cost the global economy $9.6 trillion annually in lost productivity.

The economic shift driving job hugging

Job hugging reflects converging forces that have fundamentally altered the employment landscape. The labor market has cooled dramatically. Wage premiums for job switchers collapsed from around 20% in 2022 to just 7% in 2025, according to Axios. Consumer sentiment about job availability has reached its most negative outlook since 2021. Add AI disruption anxiety—particularly in customer support and software development—and staying put feels safer than it did two years ago.

The internal blockage problem

Low turnover creates another dynamic: high performers stuck behind colleagues who aren't advancing. With fewer people leaving, advancement opportunities freeze. The backlog becomes both a symptom of job hugging and a driver of future turnover.

"When colleagues and leaders start to block progression for others, especially a high performer, we often see that employee looks for connections outside their department," Page-Thompson says. The blocker—whether a manager protecting their position or a peer unwilling to move—often responds by making things more difficult for the employee seeking growth.

Warning signs include employees speaking negatively about leadership, overanalyzing feedback, or openly stating they could do someone else's job better. "When trust erodes, you see fragmented work, low engagement scores, and people asking to transfer," Page-Thompson says. The backlog effect is particularly acute during low turnover. High performers who might have moved up in a more fluid labor market find themselves waiting, and their patience has limits.

Measuring retention quality

Low turnover isn't always a sign of health. It can signal a frozen labor market. Organizations need to look beyond retention rates and measure energy, growth, and intent. Internal mobility behavior distinguishes engaged employees from job huggers. Engaged employees apply for internal roles, volunteer for stretch work, and actively seek feedback, whereas job huggers avoid risk even when growth opportunities exist.

Manager relationships reveal commitment levels, with engaged employees having frequent check-ins, asking for coaching, and talking about the future. Job huggers keep conversations transactional and avoid career discussions.

Survey trend lines matter more than snapshots. "What matters most is who is declining, especially among early-career workers and high performers," Page-Thompson says. Those drops often appear first in confidence in leadership, growth opportunity, and feeling valued.
Performance can look stable while innovation and collaboration drop. If output stays stable but initiative and ownership decline, that's a warning sign.

Early warning signs

When external hiring picks up, stable retention can turn into unexpected exits. Internal mobility frustration appears first. "Internal rejection is often the final trigger before external departure," Page-Thompson says. If employees apply internally but don't get interviews or offers, that backlog becomes demoralizing.

Career conversations moving outside HR signal trouble. A drop in participation in development programs indicates quiet disengagement. High performers disengage before others; declining scores or reduced initiative among top talent is a red flag, even if they're meeting goals.

Managers start expressing uncertainty about who's committed. Promotion timelines that stretch and internal moves that stall create frustration, particularly among early-career talent. Talent hoarding, where managers protect strong performers because they don't want to lose them, creates a culture where advancement stalls. "Those employees don't leave immediately," Page-Thompson says. "They leave all at once when they can."

What works: Internal mobility as retention

Organizations that address job hugging proactively are those that invest in internal mobility during the freeze, not after talent starts leaving.

Emily Mabie, AI automation engineer for human resources at Zapier, represents what happens when internal mobility works. She joined Zapier three and a half years ago in learning and development, but concerns about L&D budget cuts across tech kept her looking externally. "I've been in L&D for five years, and that feeling has been present the whole time," Mabie says. When budgets get reallocated during financial stress, L&D budgets are often first to go.

Mabie adopts an "always be interviewing" philosophy, taking calls from companies recruiting for AI transformation roles. What kept her at Zapier was an internal opportunity she helped create. When Zapier launched AI agents as a product, Mabie saw potential. "I ran back to my hotel room and called my partner and said, 'I just saw the future of our industry,'" she shares.

She became an early adopter, building expertise and filming herself using the tool. That reputation building led to colleagues asking her for help building AI automations, even though her job was manager enablement. Eventually, Zapier's chief people officer designed a new role—AI automation engineer embedded in departments—and offered it to Mabie.

The internal move gave her what external opportunities couldn't. "When you hire someone in, they have to become fluent in a culture," Mabie says. "If you already love the company, it's such a relieved mental load." Mabie was transparent with her manager about interviewing externally. "As an employer, you're always competing against other open roles," she says. "That's just a fact." However, she notes that such transparency shouldn't trigger role creation. "If that role wasn't going to exist unless you thought someone was going to leave, you have an inequitable internal system," she says.

Zapier's internal mobility infrastructure includes secondments, interim roles, and transparent documentation. Mabie completed a six-month interim as a sales enablement designer before her current role. "I wouldn't have wanted to leave Zapier to try that out, but getting to try it was a fantastic opportunity," she says.

The broader trend supports this approach. In 2024, 39% of roles were filled by internal candidates, up from 32% the year before, according to Veris Insights.

Investing during the freeze

Organizations can take specific actions during low-attrition periods. Development interventions include executive coaching for high-potential employees and leadership programs for newly promoted managers, equipping them with skills often lacking when promoted from individual contributor roles.

Structural changes create pathways for mobility. Some organizations are introducing a "Talent Exporter" metric that rewards managers who encourage strong performers to move into other roles within the company, countering talent hoarding. Others implement open internal job markets where employees can apply to any position without waiting periods.

Cultural shifts support these programmatic changes. "This isn't buying pizza or adding fun activities to break rooms," Page-Thompson says. "It's about creating meaningful moments where humans can be human, share space and time, and connect with each other."

The most valuable retention metric may be qualitative. "The employees most worth retaining are those who are open-minded, curious, and willing to adapt," Page-Thompson says.
Organizations that invest in internal mobility, development, and visible career pathways during low turnover will not only retain talent longer, but they'll keep top performers engaged enough to choose to stay when the market gives them other options. Organizations treating stable headcounts as success will face unexpected exits when external hiring resumes, with their best people leaving first.