Good morning!
The “Great Resignation” is now fully in the rearview mirror, and we have transitioned to the “Great Stay.” Workers are holding onto their roles now—quit rates fell to 1.9% in September, the first time the figure has dropped below the 2% mark since 2020, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But that doesn’t mean employees are happy in their jobs. In fact, they’re often grappling with feelings of stagnation. Roughly 65% of workers today report feeling “stuck” in their current roles, according to a Glassdoor study conducted in October of this year. Tech workers lead the charge with those claustrophobic feelings at 73%, followed by advertising employees at 70%, and consultants at 69%.
“It’s no accident that trends like ‘quiet quitting’ are resonating now,” Daniel Zhao, lead economist at Glassdoor, wrote in the report. “As workers feel stuck, pent-up resentment boils under the surface and employee disengagement rises.”
The main driver of an increasingly frustrated and disgruntled workforce is a tougher job market. There are fewer open roles now than there were in years past. And when workers are able to nab a new role, making that switch is also less lucrative than it used to be. Of people who changed employers this past year, 17% indicated that their pay actually declined, the Glassdoor study found. That’s compared to 15% in 2023 who said the same, and 14% in 2019. Managers who changed employers took the biggest pay hit in 2024 with 22% seeing a drop.
Along with mass layoffs and hiring slowdowns, that means that managers will be competing with earlier-career employees for the same jobs. That can have an outsized impact on entry-level workers, the Glassdoor report points out, and will likely only lead to more resentment next year.
“Workers are increasingly feeling stuck in their careers as a soft job market with sluggish hiring means more are forced to sit tight instead of moving onto new jobs that offer better growth opportunities and pay,” notes Zhao.
Brit Morse
brit.morse@fortune.com
Around the Table
A round-up of the most important HR headlines.
Women with children are more likely than men with children to say they have declined a promotion due to a familial obligation, a new report found. Associated Press
A former Goldman Sachs banker won a discrimination lawsuit against the company, alleging that bosses at the firm were more empathic towards female employees than male workers in relation to childcare. Business Insider
Unemployment is low, but people who lose their jobs may be struggling to find new ones. New York Times
Watercooler
Everything you need to know from Fortune.
Taking protective measures. UnitedHealthcare and other health insurance companies are removing web pages that listed their executives as a result of the tragedy involving Brian Thompson earlier this week. —Paolo Confino
More safety concerns. The former CEO of fast-fashion retailer Boohoo was allegedly stalked and spied on before his departure. —Prarthana Prakash
No deal. A Texas judge shot down Boeing’s plea deal agreement after taking issue with the fact that criteria to appoint an independent monitor would take DEI into consideration. —Christiaan Hetzner
Potential protocols. The killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO will also likely change how major companies think about executive security moving forward. —Emma Burleigh
