Have you heard about this phenomenon, job hugging? Well, it's all over the media these days, and it is under my skin. I am so irritated by job hugging. It is not hugging. It is desperately clinging to one's job. Hugging would imply affection, support, comfort, but none of those things are present for people who are clinging desperately to their jobs. Just like bad software, when something is mislabeled or designed without the human who's going to use it on the other end, it leads to frustration and fear and mistakes and missed opportunities. And that's what's going on with job hugging. So in this episode, I will unpack what job hugging is, why it's the wrong name, how economic fear in our environment right now is fueling it, and what leaders can do to redesign the employee experience so that people don't cling so that instead they choose whether to stay or go. Okay, so that's where we're headed in this episode.

Now, first, let's examine what it is and what is wrong with this label, job hugging, and why it is so under my skin. Then we'll look at where the responsibility lies for being in this position in general and then specifically for organizations and individuals. How can we find a way through it? Okay, so what is it? Well, again, everywhere from the Washington Post to Forbes to Newsweek to all the major television networks and all of the blogs that you read, everybody is covering it. And the idea is that right now we are in these uncertain economic times, and that is leading to career uncertainty for people where employees are clinging to their roles out of necessity rather than out of desire, rather than out of enjoying the job and feeling like they're being a contribution there. People are staying put because leaving feels risky. And you know, the layoffs often impact the newest people on the payroll. Now, not always, but that's an inherent risk that people are feeling and why they're not leaving to go to a newer job. They don't want to be the person with the least amount of seniority on the totem pole should things, you know, push come to shove and layoffs be required.

Okay, so how bad is it right now? Well, resume builder.com did a survey of over 2200 individual fleet time employees in the United States, and they found that 45% of them are job hugging. That is, almost half people are staying in their current roles because switching roles and switching organizations feels too risky. Now, another study found that worker optimism sank in the second quarter of 2025. And the job Indicator study recorded its steepest ever decline to hit its lowest level since they began tracking worker optimism a few years. So we are basically in a situation of worker pessimism. People don't feel like it is worth the risk to go out and get a new job somewhere else, so they're staying in a job that they don't like.

And you know what happens when you stay in a job that you don't like? You don't contribute to your fullest potential. So the organization is not necessarily getting its worth or its value from the effort that you're putting in. You are not getting your own personal satisfaction of a job well done or even of going and spending 40 hours a week in a place that you enjoy joy. Okay, so it is, like, dark for everybody. And this whole notion of job hugging, again, the name is under my skin because there is nothing about it that suggests affection or support or comfort. It is really about people desperately clinging to a job because it feels too risky to leave.

All right, so let's get into why is it happening? We'll also get into why I'm so irritated with the name. Who's responsible for it, and what can we do about it? Okay, so why is it happening? Well, there's a variety of different conditions that have led to this. Right now in the United States, unemployment is rising, new job creation is down. Hiring has slowed across almost every industry sector.

There is so much economic uncertainty in our world right now. So there's rising inflation, largely due to the economic volatility that's coming from Washington in the form of tariffs, and, heck, just general chaos out of a completely incompetently run government. But I digress. You can tell a little bit about how I feel about the Trump administration, but I will put that aside for a moment, and we'll just look at the economic indicators. So these various economic indicators are making people feel like it is too risky to leave their job and go after something where they could truly contribute, where they could make a better impact, where they could make an organization better and make their own life and their career better. Now, 95% of those who are doing this job hugging report that their concerns about the job market is their primary reason for staying put. So it's not because, like, oh, they have a health concern or they have an aging parent or a young, sick child they're caring for. No, it's none of that.

It's just that they are concerned about the job market and the economy that we're in right now, and it is making them scared. Okay? And that is what's behind it. Now, your loyalty to your current employer, which is again, part of the reason why people are staying put in these economically uncertain times, while your loyalty really is not worth that much to your current employer. In just the month of August alone, there were over 800,000 layoffs in the U.S. okay, so your employer is guaranteeing nothing, your current employer guaranteeing nothing. So staying put is not necessarily going to keep you safe, my friends. All right, now, how much is this costing organizations? How much is this costing individuals? Well, one study finds that employee disengagement, and so we are not engaged if we are clinging desperately to our current role and afraid to apply for something else. Okay, so that's where we're coming up with these disengagement numbers.

But one study finds that employee disengagement costs a typical organization that has 1,000 people, around $5 million per year. Again, 5 million for a typical organization of about 1,000 people. So that would mean the average disengaged employee is costing an organization about $4,000 per year, which quite frankly I think is pretty low because I have seen the behaviors of some actively disengaged or even just even moderately disengaged employees. And the amount of sheer pressure that that puts on other people is worth far more than $4,000 per head. But also some of the nonsense and pot stirring and everything else that the disengaged or not engaged employee is doing is also going to cost the organization way more than that. And then again, at executive levels, we're going to multiply that by salary. So it's going to be at least $20,000 per year for a senior leader or an executive in an organization. And again, those who are disengaged but still clocking in, someone's got to pick up the slack.

And that's your senior leader. Again, I'm going to say it's going to cost them way cost your organization way more than $20,000 per year. Just, just saying. I'm here to report the numbers. The numbers are around $4,000 per person, around $20,000 per person in a senior leadership level or executive level role. Okay, now let's also dial it back and look at what, what's it costing the employee? The employee who is afraid to leave because there are significant costs there for their career and beyond. So Forbes did an article recently that very persuasively documented the cost to the employee on a variety of factors. One of them is salary growth.

And what they did in this article is they compared job hugging to job hopping. So what are the pros and cons. Well, when you job hop, typically you don't hop to a salary that is lower than the one that you have. You maybe stay in. Job hopping, if you're not familiar with the term, is, you know, staying in a job for two to three years, not thinking of yourself as a lifetimer there, but staying an adequate amount of time to make a contribution. You've learned the role, you've done well, probably, and then it's time to move on to the next bigger challenge. Now, maybe that's because there isn't a promotional opportunity like a promotion or advancement in the current role. And so you have to go elsewhere to find that advancement.

And sometimes people are doing it because they're changing industries altogether or they are, you know, looking for new challenges. But so what this article found in Forbes was that salary growth stalls when people are job hugging. Obviously they're not getting promoted and they're not moving to, you know, in that hop to a different organization where they're going to then take a career, a salary upgrade. So their salary is going to stagnate in terms of career advancement. Again, a lot of times we're taking on challenges when we, we move to other organizations. And so that job hopping will create some career advancement where we're moving from, let's say maybe an assistant manager level to a manager level or a manager level to a director level by moving from one organization to the next. In fact, I've worked at a couple of organizations where it was sort of a known fact that it's really hard to get promoted. You, if you really want the promotion, leave the organization, go to a higher level somewhere else, and then come back into the organization at that new level, that was a much better fit for advancement in at least one organization that I've been part of.

Okay, so career advancement stalls skill development. When you stay in the same organization in the same job, there is really no need to upskill. And so your skills development is going to stall out as well. And even job security. So due to the diversified experience that you would get, the expanded networks that you get when you go from one company to the next, one job to the next, doing that job hopping and the broader skill set that you're going to get when you move into a new role in a new organization. So job, even the job security goes up because you're getting those new skills and you're creating a bigger network. All right, do you see why I'm a little agitated about this? Okay, so even your ability to adapt and grow and become more resilient. Suffers as a result of job hugging when you stay put rather than leave.

Okay, so is this a new phenomenon or have we been here before? Well, this is not certainly the first time that we've seen people cling to their jobs out of fear. If you look back over the last half century, say the last 15 years, in the 1970s, we saw something called stagflation. Okay, so the economy was stagnant and inflation was high and so people weren't leaving their jobs. Then in the early 1980s, there was a recession. In the early 1990s, there was an economic downturn and people were scared to leave their jobs. And of course the Great Recession of 2008, 2009, workers stayed put not because they loved their jobs, but again, because the alternative felt riskier. Now today though, the twist is that even with low unemployment overall, I mean, we are seeing, and I did mention that the unemployment number starting to tick up a little bit, but still, historically we are at relatively low averages, even though they have again upticked a little bit over the past year. But this cocktail of inflation, interest rates, AI disruption, and the shaky global economy led by our own president is creating that same psychology of clinging, of desperation.

It smacks of desperation. It is job clinging with a 2020's flavor to it. Okay, so now let me get into why I think hugging is the wrong name. So the name, the moniker, Job hugging came from some consultants at Korn Ferry International, which is a global consulting firm. I don't know why they chose such a sanitized name. It is a euphemism that's making something that is totally unacceptable, a totally unacceptable situation, seem palatable. Hugging again implies warmth and connection, but that is not how people are feeling about their jobs. So we're going to reframe this idea, this notion of job hugging to job desperately clinging.

Again, the term job hugging is totally misleading. Hugging implies warmth and affection and comfort. But what we're actually seeing, again, something that smells and spanks of desperation and desperately clinging. So it is a fear based attachment to one's current job, even, and especially when the employee dislikes it. I mean, if you liked your job, we wouldn't call it job hugging. We would just call it, you're happy in your job and you want to stay there. You want to, you know, retain that position. But this is again, something that the employee dislikes.

The employee would rather leave. And if you wouldn't be surprised to hear me say, language matters tremendously. So just like in user Experience design. A mislabeled button or a menu option that leads to the wrong place is going to frustrate somebody who's using that software. It's going to lead them to make mistakes and leading them just to frustration and mistakes. And a mislabeled work trend minimizes the very real anxiety that the employee is experiencing and it also minimizes what's at stake for the organization. So I don't think that this mislabeling is just negatively impacting the employee. I think it's also negative, negatively impacting the organization.

So this whole situation is born out of fear, not out of love and affection. And the things that go along with the label hugging, the warmth. Where is the warmth of a hug when somebody is desperately clinging to their job? So what we are seeing is not hugging, but rather people clinging for dear life. So again, in user experience, words matter. A mislabeled button, again, is going to frustrate the user. We, we need to fix the label on this one. So we need to name the problem honestly so that people can design the right solution, so that individuals can take charge of their careers when it is up to them, and so that organizations can think more critically about redesigning the employee experience if the employee experience is not optimized for somebody's personal and career growth inside of that organization. So let's just dig into this name for a moment because there is a lot to unpack in this naming thing.

So you've probably heard me talk about this before, but the power of language has underneath it the social construction of reality. That is, we create reality by labeling things in a certain way. So the language that we use to describe things shapes other people's perception of those things. The words that we use create the social reality that we live in. And so calling this phenomenon hugging softens it. It disguises the very fear and desperation that workers are feeling that are causing them to stay in one spot. It is obscuring the truth. Soft labels like this minimize urgency.

It's just like calling layoffs, right? Sizing or calling toxic behavior. Somebody who's got rough edges, a little rough around the edges, that hides the harm. So calling something that is truly desperate clinging a hug absolutely obscures the pain that the employee is experiencing. So why does accuracy matter? Well, both in communication writ large and in user experience, accurate labeling allows us to diagnose and fix problems when things are mislabeled. It creates blind spots, it delays finding solutions, and it perpetuates the suffering that people, in this case, that people are experiencing in careers that are dissatisfying. It also suggests to me that big corporations and consulting firms like Korn Ferry are afraid to stand up to what's happening in the national political stage and the trickle down impact that has on people's careers. It's just like we're seeing in Congress where people are not standing up to President Trump and calling him out on the damage that he is doing to our economy and the job market. It's deplorable.

And for large consulting organizations to not take a stand and call something what it is puts them right in the same seat as the politicians. It is absolutely deplorable. We need to call things what they are. There's a broader principle at play here too. And whether this is in workplaces or in public policy or personal relationships, euphemisms dull the reality. We need honest language as the first step towards meaningful change, whether it is in, you know, again, something broader on the political spectrum or a trickle down impact of that, like people being afraid to leave their jobs because of the uncertainty in the economy that we're feeling right now. So let's call it what it is. We're going to leave behind this moniker of job hugging and we are going to call it desperate clinging in an uncertain economy.

You can tell I'm a little irritated by this one, can't you? It's got me a little worked up. All right, well now let's kind of tease apart. Is this an employee issue or an employer issue? Now, on the surface with, you know, employees, it looks like an employee issue. It looks like individuals are staying put because they are risk averse. Again, rising inflation, slower hiring, and fears about job security. The decision looks personal, tied to people's individual financial realities, their tolerance for uncertainty and their tolerance for risk and soar and so forth. Now, at its core, employees are reacting rationally to a system that's very poorly designed and doesn't show them any options and doesn't show them any career progression or any rewards for staying. So if internal mobility pathways, career transparency or psychological safety are missing, workers are going to default to desperate clinging instead of looking for the next best opportunity out there on the horizon.

So this is really a systems design problem. It is easy to blame the individual for being risk averse, but I think it's a bigger issue than that. So from a UX thinking perspective, leaders need to own the design of the system that employees are clinging to. So let's dig into kind of both sides a little bit more. So again, from the employee side, on the surface issue, it looks like jobs. This notion of job hugging, which we again are going to call desperate clinging, looks like the employee's individual decision that they're choosing to stay despite job dissatisfaction. But again, it is driven by these external pressures like inflation and the unemployment numbers, the market's contracting and so the individual's risk tolerance of whatever their financial situation is, it certainly does play a big role. And employees can appear stuck and even disengaged because they can't act, which reinforces this idea that this is their personal burden and they just need to get a little bolder and take a bigger step, take a risk.

But I think it's more nuanced than that. So I think it is just as much a management or employer issue. So let's look at that from a couple different sides. So the first is of course the language and framing which we've already been talking about. If we use a warm sounding solution like job hugging, it trivializes or even masks the severity of the levels of disengagement that people are feeling. And that's an employer communication failure. It makes leaders think that there's less urgency around this topic because, well, people are job hugging. Big deal.

At least there's lower turnover. Again, I'm placing the blame fairly on Korn Ferry consultants for this one as well as other people, the media who are perpetuating this notion of hugging because again, it's something soft and warm and cozy. But it is nothing of the sort. It is people scared out of their minds to make a decision. Okay, so as we think now about the design of the employee experience, when we look at it through a UX thinking lens, the system, and that would be the workplace, needs to be designed to give employees safe, viable paths forward. That is in the best interests of the employees not wanting to leave because there's room to grow as opposed to not wanting to leave because they're scared out of their minds. It saves the company money on turnover because, you know, and we've talked about that on this show in the past, turnover is really expensive when there is internal mobility and cross training and career transparency. When those things are in place, the people feel like staying.

They like where they're working when those things are missing. The system is nudging people towards staying stuck and being risk averse and being scared. Now when we think about the long term costs of this, when employees cling to their roles out of fear, managers get a team that's physically present but emotionally absent. And that leads to low employee engagement. It leads to presenteeism where people are showing up but really not trying, low innovation and eventual turnover spikes. Because this economic situation will turn itself around eventually. And when it does, there is going to be a host of people scrambling out of their jobs and the employers are going to stuck with. Be stuck with really high turnover.

Okay, so those are management problems, not individual problems. So the bottom line here is that job hugging maybe seems to begin as an individual reaction to the economic uncertainty that we're dealing with right now. But it reveals itself as just as much a management and organizational design issue as an individual risk tolerance issue. So if leaders design workplaces that reduce fear and increase clarity, employees won't be clinging. They'll choose. They will powerfully choose to stay because they like working in that role at that organization, or they were power. They will powerfully choose to leave, to go find something that is a better fit for them. Okay, so where do we go from here and what can you do about this? Well, the first thing I want you to do is I hope you are now feeling fully evangelized to set the record straight on what we're calling it.

At a minimum, do not call it job hugging. Call it what it is, call it job clinging when you discuss it. And if you need to point people back to this episode of this podcast, if they need to hear it from me, okay, just point them right back to this podcast. This is episode number 237 of the Working Conversations podcast. You can find the show notes and all the [email protected]/237 and of course you can find this episode on all the podcast platforms. Okay, so but number one, set the record straight. We are going to call it what it is, desperate job clinging in uncertain economic times. Second, a second thing that you can do, and that is challenge euphemisms just in general, not just this one.

But notice other soft labels at work like quiet quitting and right sizing. And call them out for what they really are. And this is where critical thinking comes into play. Because anytime we're hearing one of these soft euphemisms in the media, in the news, we need to get critical and think about what is actually the underlying conditions that are causing this. And then what should we really call it? What is a more accurate name again? So let's challenge all the euphemisms because they tend to soften things and make things feel more palatable. And I want you to be as charged up about this as I am because I am irritated as heck about all of this. Okay, if you're a leader, I want you to audit your organization's language and systems. Are you masking painful realities of any aspect of work life with gentle terms like hugging or positive spins on things that really are not that positive? I want you to replace euphemisms with clear and direct language.

There's no point in skirting it. Let's just call it what it is. Now, if you're an individual in an organization, I want you to reflect on your own current work experience, your own current organizational experience and career life. Are you clinging to a job that doesn't fit you anymore or an organization that you don't want to be part of anymore out of fear? If there's even a little part of you that gets curious about that, then probably on some level there is something that you are afraid of leaving. Now, it might be not as big as the job hugging phenomenon, but if there is something there that is fear based, I want you to identify it and name it for yourself. Once you do that, it is much easier to identify a small step that you could take to start to reduce your own fear in being stuck.

Whether that is exploring internal mobility, learning a new skill, having that tough conversation with your boss or your co-worker. If that's where the fear is coming from, maybe it's not about fear of clinging to your job, but maybe it's about fear of some smaller aspect inside of your job. But I want you to identify that fear, name that fear and then identify one small action you can start to take to address that fear. Maybe it's simply making some connections on LinkedIn and updating your network just so that once you have more agency in the situation, you can take those actions and move beyond whatever concerns that you're feeling right now that might have you feeling stuck. Okay, my friends, we are drawing this to a close. So you now know why I do not like the name job hugging. It is job desperation clinging. And it is caused by the economic uncertainty that we are feeling in the job market right now and in the broader economy.

Is it an individual issue or is it an organizational issue? It's yes. Both organizations have some agency, some roles to play to make sure they're creating organizations where people want to stay and want to contribute. But part of the responsibility also falls on individuals. If you are desperately clinging to something and it is no longer a good fit, you need to get clear about what it is you're clinging to why you're clinging to it and then start to take some steps that you can take to move you to whatever is next for you. Whether those are tiny steps to begin with or big bold steps or just getting everything lined up for when the economy feels a little bit safer for you to step outside of the thing that you're feeling stuck in right now. Okay my friends, if this episode sparked an idea for you or an issue for you that you need to confront, or if you think, oh, I have a friend who needs to hear this, absolutely. I want you to share this podcast far and wide. I want to be the catalyst to changing this soft language around people being afraid and get the right terms on it.

It so help me by sharing this episode with at least one other person because you and I together can literally change the world. Thanks for tuning in this week my friends and I will catch you next week for the next episode of the Working Conversations podcast. Take good care of.