A millennial-era phrase is defining the work landscape of 2026, but a hit single from 1962 may be more fitting. In the words of Neil Sedaka, “Breaking up is hard to do.” Especially in the era of what Glassdoor calls “the great job situationship.”
In the modern American workplace, the romantic metaphors are getting uncomfortably literal. If you feel like your relationship with your employer is stuck in a gray area—somewhere between “committed partnership” and “just passing time”—you aren’t alone. According to new insights from Glassdoor, the labor market has entered “the great job situationship” era.
The term “situationship” is likely familiar to any millennial, the same cohort that Glassdoor previously found makes up a majority of managers in the mid 2020s workplace. It’s also a dominant theme in the relationships of Gen Z, and was even given mainstream status in Taylor Swift lyrics. It’s essentially something that happens before the “DTR” phase, shorthand for “defining the relationship,” and nobody feels great about it.
The term’s origins lie in a 2017 Cosmopolitan article describing a romantic relationship, about three months in length, that’s extraordinarily painful, with one side having more interest than the other. (As a sign of its influence, Cosmopolitan has been continually updating the original post by Carina Hsieh, with Kayla Kibbe most recently on the byline). Last fall, Glassdoor economists began applying the label to the labor market to describe early-career workers who take roles simply because they need a paycheck.
“You’re in a situation that’s okay. It’s better than unemployment. But it’s not quite the job that you want,” explained Chris Martin, Glassdoor lead researcher, in an interview with Fortune. He described it as “better than nothing, but not what you hope for or what you want.”
Martin highlighted the findings, which mostly conformed to his expectations but still surprised him in the magnitude of the angst over the work situationship. A staggering 93% of workers admitted to staying in jobs they didn’t love purely for stability, while 63% described their relationship with work as “complicated” or said they were “ready to break up.” Another 74% of workers said they believe it is not possible to love any job in 2026.
There are even findings of toxicity. Some workers, dubbed “career nesters” or “job huggers” by Glassdoor, choose to stay and attempt to “fall back in love” with their roles. Data shows that 28% of workers who gave a negative review eventually rated the same employer more positively 12 to 24 months later.
Glassdoor’s research strongly suggests that millennial managers may be the problem. The modern workplace has a strong flavor of poor management, with poor leadership quickly transforming what started as a good job into a bad one, with burnout and heavy workloads following soon afterward. Martin said that what he sees happening is a combination of millennials moving into a different life stage as the labor market is also going into a downturn. From a generational perspective, he added, “Gen X was going through it as well, and we just never cared because no one asks Gen X what they think or care about it, right?”
Caught in a bad romance
Martin declined to say if he personally related to the situationship theme, saying, “No one wants to hear about an economist’s romantic life,” but he said he thinks many people can relate to this theme of dissatisfaction. “So you can interview for a job, and everything seems great. And then when you get there, you realize that the job isn’t quite what you expected, or it could be that your job changes over time and sort of morphs into something that you don’t want.” He said he thinks there are many ways that people end up in roles that aren’t what they expected.
There is evidence in the data that American workers are caught in a bad romance. David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, argued earlier this week that the economy is a mix of “soggy consumption, weak job gains, and a sour public mood,” citing a collapse in car sales, travel spending, and other indicators of a struggling real economy amidst a booming stock market. Albert Edwards, the global strategist at Société Générale, noted several days earlier that the household savings rate has collapsed to 3.5%, the lowest since before the Global Financial Crisis. Calling that “big news,” he added: “That’s nuts!”
“When you’re stepping into a management role … you’re in a different life stage, and the way that you feel about your work and the way you relate to work yourself is going to change,” Martin of Glassdoor said. He also pushed back on the millennial framing slightly, asking the question of whether this situationship feeling predated the 2017 article that gave it its name. “Are these normal things that happen to our relationships at work as we get older and we age into management or leadership positions?” It’s worth asking that question, he said.
“In a hot market, work can feel a lot more like fun when your company needs to go out of their way to retain you,” Martin observed. But when options disappear, the reality sets in: “Work starts to feel a lot more like work and a lot less like fun.”
However, what is different is the unusual pullback in hiring throughout most of 2025 and into 2026, trapping many workers in roles they would otherwise leave. Glassdoor has consistently found the job market described as “frozen,” characterized by low hiring rates and low firing rates. While unemployment remains low, the ability to easily hop from one job to another has dried up.
In terms of ways to turn this around, Martin said one of the big findings is, just find a new job. “That’s your best shot at turning a bad relationship with work into a good relationship with work.” If you were counseling a friend about their love life and saw these results, Martin added, “I would just tell them to break up.” But that’s just not possible for most people in what Martin said is still a “low-hire, low-fire” economy. “Unfortunately, most of us are not in a position to break up with our job without having something else lined up,” Martin noted, adding that he wouldn’t recommend approaching romance that way, however. “And so that’s where I think the analogy breaks down.”
